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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62743231919932035852017-06-27T05:23:16.684-07:00Disruptive DissertationTucker Liebermanhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-15356374501899720642017-06-06T19:39:00.002-07:002017-06-23T21:30:36.937-07:00Dear Readers: Should you buy Week One of Covfefe?
Within one week of the infamous covfefe tweet, a dozen e-books were published for Amazon Kindle with the neologism in the title.

I Can Has Covfefe? by Bruno Zogma

This guy has prepared a piece of literature that simultaneously is and isn't about covfefe. The word is used here simply to mean "nonsense." This e-book is a monologue by a character who is yelling at a friend. It's pretty original, and not only in its use of a word inadvertently coined by the president six days ago. I mean that it is original in its utter strangeness.

Covfefe: A Collection of Unrelated Short Stories by C. L. Mann

A normal, properly book-length collection of short stories with a sense of humor, despite some distracting formatting problems with incorrect paragraph indentations and random line breaks.

Toward the end, the mood goes somber. One paragraph contains bright blue links to Wikipedia which opens up the most plausible explanation that the author was doing research for historical accuracy and then did not reread his or her own book to notice and remove the links. From this last part of the book, there are nine intentional citations of URLs (no titles/authors). Such references are a little odd for a short story collection.

The magic word appears nowhere in the book. I have no idea where the title came from.

Covfefe Bigly: An Erotic Wonderland by Biff Bowen

Fake erotica using a fake word. This is an actual story, though a silly parody. Not bad.

Donald Trump's Best covfefe Moments: Quotes By Donald 'Covfefe' Trump by John Citizen

Replaces the nouns in familiar Trump quotes with the word 'covfefe.' The quotes make just as much nonsense with the replacement as without. Point taken! The man never made sense to begin with. This is really quite funny.

Covfefe: A word by any other name... by Sage Smith

Similar to the effort of John Citizen, this book replaces the nouns in familiar movie quotes and aphorisms, but this works somewhat less well than Citizen's take. No reader will recognize all of the quotes, especially with the keywords blotted out. Moreover, the lesson seems to be simply that these quotes are flattened by taking out the most powerful words, which is not at all surprising. The collection sells at the stiff price of $5 which leads one to conclude that this special formatting of one small quote per page was planned to milk the Kindle Unlimited per-page pricing structure. The formatting was not executed well, seemingly with carriage returns instead of page breaks, causing the user to see arbitrarily centered text depending on their device. You might profit from this collection if you want to select a quote or two to start your own line of meme merchandise.

Covfefe: Prince of Words: A History of the Most Important Lexical Advance of Our Time by Breaking Burgh

Like a blog post. A couple of the quotes are shared with Sage Smith's version. Rather funny. $2.99 seems a bit overpriced.

Covfefe: A "Coffee Table" Book by Anon

Again, like blog post interspersed with clip art, but shorter than most blog posts and making less sense. $2.99 is not a good price for it.

Donald Trump and the Mystery of Covfefe by Doctor Conservative

Ditto. Very poor formatting. The clip art is cut into quadrants and displays in random places.

Covfefe by Liv Augusta and Jay Kistler

A collection of a dozen acrostics, one word for each of the seven letters in the holy name. That would be 84 words in the entire book; there is no introduction. It is a fool's errand to place a value on poetry based on word count, but the enduring quibble is that the book description does not exactly indicate that you are buying only 84 words of anything when you pay 99 cents for it. The book description is: "A short digital booklet of acrostic poems exploring the meaning of the word 'covfefe.'" That it is, and now we know.

Various Things That Are NOT COVFEFE by D. D. C. Books

Compelling photographs of wildlife, plus still life with waffles and vegetables in the kitchen, plus swimming pools and Earth orbit. This is obviously the work of professional photographers. Photo credit is not given. There are no words of any kind.

Mein Covfefe by Courtney Driver

Based on the book description, this looks like it would be the most politically substantial. Unfortunately, the content is technically corrupted and will not download.

Covfefe! Donald Trump's Craziest Tweets compiled by Al Freedman

These are screenshots of Trump tweets. Only four are visible. It appears that the author intended to include another half-dozen, but they do not display. There is no commentary. $2.99 is a very bad price for this. The President will tweet at you all day for free. You can even follow him on Twitter.
 Tucker Liebermanhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-45556384596799825522017-06-03T09:26:00.001-07:002017-06-03T09:38:57.040-07:00'This is Pride Month': So simple, even a burrito can do it
Making a statement in favor of LGBTQ rights and dignity is easy. Today in the United States, it isn't even politically risky, since a clear majority of Americans say they believe that same-sex relations are morally acceptable, should be legal, and should be permitted the rights of marriage.

A football team can make a statement. Two Los Angeles football teams, the Rams and the Chargers, are sponsoring June 2017 Venice Pride in Venice, Calif. Spokespeople for the teams mentioned motivations like "acceptance and equality" and "equity, diversity and inclusion."

A fast-food chain can make a statement. In Massachusetts, the burrito restaurant Chipotle will donate 50% of the proceeds of each sale on Sunday, June 4 to Boston Pride if the customer mentions the promotion, according to an email sent by Boston Pride.

The president can make a statement, but he will not. On June 1, the White House issued proclamations to celebrate June as "National Homeownership Month," "National Ocean Month," "African-American Music Appreciation Month," and "Great Outdoors Month," according to Nick Duffy, who added that the president "maintains a hardcore base of gay Republican supporters. They mainly point to that time he waved an upside-down rainbow flag." (The event in question was one week before the election; the flag was hand-lettered with his own name. Note its literal message "LGBTs for Trump," not "Trump for LGBTs.")

Photo by Carlo Allegri for Reuters | Huffington Post

In the past, then-Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama issued proclamations supporting Pride Month. Obama also hosted receptions for leaders in the movement. Zack Ford wrote that the current president, "who has long claimed to be an LGBTQ ally, could have become the first Republican president to acknowledge Pride Month with a proclamation, but he didn't — and the silence is deafening." Furthermore, Ford wrote,

"he hasn't taken a single pro-LGBTQ action in office. Instead, he's withdrawn guidance protecting transgender and gender-nonconforming students, dropped out of several court cases related to LGBTQ rights, and appointed countless personnel with viciously anti-LGBTQ records."

LGBTQ issues were mentioned during his campaign only "when he was trying to convince the queer community to embrace Islamophobia."

Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Minority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, stated:
"LGBT Americans face an assault on their rights from the White House and House Republicans, who are gutting HIV prevention and treatment initiatives, dismantling protections for transgender children in public schools and conspiring to render LGBT Americans invisible in the census."

The website of the Log Cabin Republicans, a group that self-describes as "the nation's largest Republican organization dedicated to representing LGBT conservatives and allies," does not publicly challenge the current administration on the subject of Pride Month. In fact, their website does not mention Pride Month at all. It is not clear if they celebrate it.

My burrito will make a small statement, but the president will not.
Tucker Liebermanhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-50540868883786617402017-05-27T13:03:00.001-07:002017-05-28T21:04:16.843-07:00With headlines like these, it is normal to feel anxious
Apart from my four newspaper subscriptions, TV, and radio, here are some articles about the current U.S. government that I've stumbled across online over the past month, most of which I haven't had time to read or digest in full. The headlines alone are intense. Mostly what I am learning is that it is normal to feel overwhelmed, anxious, and worn out. If you feel the same way, you are not alone.

Artwork: "Collaboration between Scarlett Raven and Mind," The Mental Health Charity, April 4, 2016. Wikimedia Commons.

"A display of unbelievable ignorance: In a real country with a real president, Trump's AP interview would destroy him." Our president thinks the Pentagon is a company, terrorism was a recent invention and 9/11 was a ratings coup. Bob Cesca, Salon, April 25, 2017.

"Trump's Ignorance Is Radicalizing U.S. Historians," Graham Vyse, New Republic, May 3, 2017.

"Trump's Fitness To Serve Is 'Officially Part Of The Discussion In Congress'," New Yorker writer Evan Osnos with NPR's Fresh Air hosted by Terry Gross, May 4, 2017.

"One Of America's Largest Cities Just Voted To Impeach Trump," Brian Tyler Cohen, Occupy Democrats, May 6, 2017.

"Why the Sally Yates Hearing Was Very Bad News for the Trump White House," David Corn, Mother Jones, May 8, 2017.

"Days Before Firing, Comey Asked for More Resources for Russia Inquiry," Matthew Rosenberg and Matt Apuzzo, New York Times, May 10, 2017.

"Experts on authoritarianism are absolutely terrified by the Comey firing," Zack Beauchamp, Vox, May 11, 2017.

"Trump Has Batted A Hornet's Nest And The Sh*t Is About To Hit The Fan," Ann Werner, Liberals Unite, May 11, 2017.

"Trump admitted he obstructed justice. Now he needs to go," Michael A. Cohen, Boston Globe, May 12, 2017.

"The End of Trump," Robert Reich, RobertReich.org, May 14, 2017.
"The law is reasonably clear. If Trump removed Comey to avoid being investigated, that's an impeachable offense."

"NATO asks world leaders to play dumb so Trump will understand them," Abigail Tracy, Vanity Fair, May 15, 2017. (See also previous article from before the election: "Trump stuns U.S. allies with terrifying comments about NATO," Abigail Tracy, Vanity Fair, July 21, 2016.)

"Why the FBI might wage "war" on Trump — and how they would actually do it," Zack Beauchamp, Vox, May 16, 2017.

"Michael Moore promises secret film will end Trump presidency," Joey Nolfi, Entertainment Weekly, May 16, 2017.

"Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation," Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times, May 16, 2017.

"Don't Impeach: The Liberal Case for Not Removing Trump," Cliston Brown, Observer, May 16, 2017.

"James Comey and the Revenge of Washington's Professional Class," Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New Yorker, May 17, 2017.

"Trump Team Knew Flynn Was Under Investigation Before He Came to White House," Matthew Rosenberg and Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, May 17, 2017.

"Former Israeli spymasters rip into Trump, say Israel must reassess intel sharing," Judah Ari Gross, Times of Israel, May 17, 2017.

"Senate Moves Forward With Bipartisan Bill to Rein in Jeff Sessions," Tana Ganeva, Rolling Stone, May 18, 2017.

"Chaffetz to resign, raising doubts about Trump probe," Michelle L. Price and Brady McCombs, Associated Press, May 19, 2017.

"Here Comes the GOP Bloodbath," Erick Erickson, Washington Post, May 19, 2017.
Quote: "Trump is increasingly disliked, and the Republicans who enable him are increasingly distrusted....Unless Republican leaders stage an intervention, I expect them to experience a deserved electoral blood bath in November 2018."

"Sources: White House lawyers research impeachment," Evan Perez, CNN, May 19, 2017.

"Press advocates appalled by Trump's reported call to jail journalists," Joe Strupp, Media Matters, May 20, 2017.

"Trump's budget is so cruel a Russian propaganda outfit set the White House straight," Dana Milbank, Washington Post, May 22, 2017.

"Watch Netanyahu's face while Trump says he never mentioned "Israel" to the Russians," Sarah Wildman, Vox, May 22, 2017.

"President Trump's Budget Proposal Calls For Deep Cuts To Education," Anya Kamenetz, NPR, May 22, 2017.

"Donald Trump's Budget Breaks These 7 Campaign Promises," Jane C. Timm, NBC, May 23, 2017.

"Trump releases budget that slashes government programs," Niv Elis, The Hill, May 23, 2017.

"Former CIA Director Brennan: "With every last ounce of devotion to this country, resist," Kaili Joy Gray, ShareBlue, May 23, 2017.

"Obama's CIA chief just offered a Trump-Russia quote for the ages," Yochi Dreazen, Vox, May 23, 2017.

"Trump Budget Based on $2 Trillion Math Error," Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine Daily Intelligencer, May 23, 2017.

At the NATO conference in Brussels on May 25, 2017, Trump shoved his way in front of Montenegro's Prime Minister Dusko Markovic (VIDEO) and publicly lectured the allies that they were not paying enough into defense (CNN VIDEO).

"GOP strategist admits he colluded with Russian hackers to hurt Hillary Clinton, Democrats," Sophia Tesfaye, Salon, May 25, 2017.

"Researchers say they've uncovered a disinformation campaign with apparent Russian link," David Filipov, Washington Post, May 25, 2017.

"Zombie Trumpcare at a glance, from the CBO," Joan McCarter, Daily Kos, May 25, 2017.
"By 2026, 51 million people will be uninsured...the [cost] increase would be disproportionately larger among older people with lower income...premiums for people buying comprehensive plans would be unaffordable...It would cut $834 billion from Medicaid in the next ten years, and cut 14 million people out of Medicaid coverage."

"German news magazine rips Trump, calling him 'unfit' and 'a danger to the world'," Jen Hayden, Daily Kos, May 26, 2017.

"Big-time backlash: When all polling on Donald Trump is dismissed as fake," Howard Kurtz, Fox News, May 26, 2017.

"No, White Friend—You Weren't "Embarrassed" by Barack Obama," John Pavlovitz, JohnPavlovitz.com, May 26, 2017.

"Coal Miners Crushed As White House Admits Trump Lied About Bringing Back Coal Jobs," Jason Easley, PoliticusUSA.com, May 26, 2017.

"Republicans continue to lie about cutting Medicaid."U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders shared a video on May 26, 2017. Republican Joe Scarborough has a message for his own party: Stop lying about cutting Medicaid by $850 billion.

"Sources: Comey acted on Russian intelligence he knew was fake," Dana Bash, Shimon Prokupecz and Gloria Borger, CNN, May 26, 2017.

"Boehner: Trump's presidency so far is mostly 'a complete disaster'," Deirdre Shesgreen, USA Today, May 26, 2017.
"The Ohio Republican [and former House Speaker] said Trump has handled national security and foreign policy issues well, but added: "Everything else he's done (in office) has been a complete disaster...He's still learning how to be president."

"Intelligence expert: Kushner's security clearance must be pulled 'right now'," Kerry Eleveld, Daily Kos, May 26, 2017.
"Two top Trump advisers dodge Kushner questions," Jeremy Diamond and Jeff Zeleny, CNN, May 27, 2017.

"Malcolm Nance's Stunning Analysis of the Kushner Scandal," NedSparks, Daily Kos, May 27, 2017.
 Tucker Liebermanhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-31444935987676298872017-05-19T04:38:00.002-07:002017-05-19T04:41:01.110-07:00Use bipartisan energy to rein in power
Sci-fi author David Brin suggests that both U.S. political parties seize the general opportunity of the moment to institute more checks and balances on the president. Why use up political capital merely exchanging the 45th president for his vice president, Mike Pence?

Specifically, in his Facebook post, Brin proposes enabling a way to delay military orders and send them for congressional committee review; allowing for "the other party" to make the president's appointments for one afternoon a week; and creating a bipartisan "Fact Checking Institute."

During his campaign for office, the 45th president selected Mike Pence to be his vice president "as impeachment insurance," in Brin's analysis. In other words, Brin believes that Pence will also pose significant troubles for Democrats and their agenda, and that Trump "knew what he was doing" in picking Pence to discourage opponents from bringing down Trump.
 Some of David Brin's popular books:

    Tucker Liebermanhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-87327833205928247102017-05-04T18:41:00.001-07:002017-05-05T03:57:45.749-07:00The 2017 persecution of gay men in Chechnya

Gay men in Chechnya already had to use assumed names to meet at cafes, but today Chechnyan police agents are leading sting operations in which they conduct online chats with gay men, arrange in-person meetings, then ambush, kidnap, and torture them and force them to inform on other gay men. A possible triggering event for the violence:

"The crackdown began after GayRussia, a rights group based in Moscow, applied for permits for gay pride parades in the Caucasus region, prompting counterprotests by religious groups, the men said. In Chechnya, it became something even worse — a mass 'prophylactic' cleansing of homosexuals, the security service agents told the gay men as they rounded them up."

The persecution was first reported on April 1, 2017 by the newspaper Novaya Gazeta as having resulted in over 100 arrests and three deaths up to that point.

In response to these reports, the press secretary for Chechnya's leader Ramzan A. Kadyrov essentially affirmed his support for the policy of killing gay men without directly admitting to it. "If there were such people in Chechnya," the press secretary said, "law-enforcement agencies wouldn't need to have anything to do with them because their relatives would send them somewhere from which there is no returning."

Of the three reported fatalities, one was due to torture and the other two were victims of so-called "honor killings" by family members after they were released. Tanya Lokshina, the Russia Program Director for Human Rights Watch said that, in Chechnya, "victims of torture and other horrific abuses refrain from seeking justice or withdraw their complaints as a result of threats, including death threats and threats of retaliation against family members."

On April 13, the Geneva-based office of the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights said that Russia should "put an end to the persecution of people perceived to be gay or bisexual." On April 15, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said: "The United States must lead the way to demand an end to these egregious violations of human rights." On April 18, a CNN video interviewed one man whose face and voice were blurred to protect his identity. On April 19, Putin said the claim of the pogrom was "libelous," and the next day, Putin's spokesman maintained that Russia had found no evidence of arrests in Chechnya.

Andrew E. Kramer interviewed several men for his article "'They Starve You. They Shock You': Inside the Anti-Gay Pogrom in Chechnya." Published in the New York Times on April 21, it provides disturbing details. One man in his 20s reported that he was brought to an apartment where five other gay men had already been brought for the same reason and that his assailants "strapped him to a chair, attached electrical wires to his hands with alligator clips and began an interrogation." The men were held for up to several weeks.

On April 21, Sir Alan Duncan, Britain's deputy to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, told the House of Commons that "sources have said that he [Kadyrov] wants the [LGBT] community eliminated by the start of Ramadan." Ramadan begins on May 26 this year. Duncan also said that he and British Embassy representatives had spoken to the Russian government about the persecution.

On May 2, Lewis Corner wrote for GayTimes that a man had told France 24 News: "They tell the parents to kill their child. They say 'Either you do it, or we will.'" On May 3, Will Stroude wrote for Attitude "that the families of those imprisoned are eventually summoned to the prison, where they are tasked with carrying out their own relative's execution" in the account of a victim who spoke to France 24. Stroude wrote that Novaya Gazeta had increased its fatality count to over 30 men "executed by the authorities or their own families".

Stroude wrote:

"Russia has faced increasingly loud calls from the international community to bring an end to the violence, and while a Russia Foreign Affairs minister confirmed to Yahoo News's Katie Couric last week that an investigation into the situation was currently taking place, she was reluctant to comment on the matter further."

Assistance

Emergency legal and travel assistance is coordinated in Russia by the Moscow Community Center, the Russian LGBT Network, and by Canada-based Rainbow Railroad that says it is working with the Russian LGBT Network. The head of LGBT-Set-Russia has been quoted in the news regarding the need for such assistance. Amnesty International UK has petitions called "Chechnya: Stop Abducting and Killing Gay Men" with over 170,000 signatures and Protect Journalists Who Revealed Abuse of Gay Men in Chechnya with 30,000 signatures as of May 4.
 Tucker Liebermanhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-9105615628696336632017-04-01T15:00:00.001-07:002017-04-01T15:01:05.864-07:00Quotes on lying
Robert A. Burton:

"As a lifelong poker player, I have spent considerable time developing a winning strategy, yet I am not a great player. I have long suspected a variety of flaws, but haven't figured out a clear solution. With the recent popularity of televised poker tournaments where the viewers can see the players' hole cards at the start of each hand, the problem has become transparent. The players with the best overall results are those who aggressively make selective large bluffs, a style with which I have never been entirely comfortable.

* * *

Trying to figure out what the other players have turns out to be of less value than just making the large bluff periodically."

Thomas S. Szasz:

It [the term "lying"] comes into play only when the assumption is made that the communicants have pledged themselves to truthfulness. Thus, the term "lying" can be used meaningfully only in situations in which the rules of the game prescribe truthfulness. This is often assumed in everyday human relationships, and especially in those which are emotionally close, such as in marriage and friendship. Perjury is a special kind of lying, committed in a court of law by a person giving testimony. Here the rules of the game are explicitly formulated; lying (perjury) is punishable by legally enforced sanctions."

Lisa Kogan:

"Honesty is a delightful policy, but I'm here to tell you that without at least a few lies, Thanksgiving with the family would be a thing of the past, first dates would end faster than you can dismiss your biological clock with a jaunty "Que sera, sera... ," every political figure who intentionally linked Iraq with Osama bin Laden would be forced to resign in disgrace, and any number of plastic surgeons throughout the greater Los Angeles area would end their lives in the gutter holding large cardboard signs that read WILL BOTOX FOR FOOD.

* * *

To this day, Julia believes that Toys "R" Us is only open when my parents visit Manhattan; the shelves are stocked as Grandma and Grandpa's plane touches down and the doors to the store lock as soon as they head back to Detroit.

Here is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: My name is Lisa, and I am a liar, though a good marketing consultant could probably finesse the word into something a bit more palatable: "Reality Stylist" might be good, or "Pinocchiotologist" could work. My mother insists that, at the end of the day, what I am is a storyteller — and she might have a point.

Joan Didion says that "we tell ourselves stories in order to live." I think that's right. Forget what I tell cabdrivers for sport or dental hygienists for spin control or "Bambi" readers for peace of mind. It's the lies we tell ourselves that determine the particular arc of our stories."

M. Veera Pandiyan:

Liars, it seems, are wired differently from the rest of us. On the average they have between 22% and 26% more prefrontal white matter and 14% less grey matter.

The study by Dr Yaling Yang, from the psychology department of the USC, and psychology professor Dr Adrian Raine, who is now at University of Pennsylvania, used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to explore differences in brains among pathological liars, anti-social disorder personalities and those who were normal.

According to Dr Raine, more white matter provided liars with the tools necessary to master the complex art of deceit.

"Pathological liars can't always tell truth from falsehood and contradict themselves in interviews. They are very brazen in terms of their manner, but very cool when talking about this."

"Lying takes a lot of effort. It's almost mind reading. You have to be able to understand the mindset of the other person.

"You also have to suppress your emotions or regulate them because you don't want to appear nervous. There's quite a lot to do there. You've got to suppress the truth," Dr Raine was quoted as saying in a USC article after the study was published.

He said the more "networking" there was in the prefrontal cortex, the more the person had an upper hand in lying, adding that their verbal skills were higher and that they had a natural advantage.

In normal people, the grey matter helps to keep the impulse to lie in check. With the surplus of white matter and a deficit of grey matter, liars have more tools to lie and fewer moral restraints than normal people.

Sources

Robert A. Burton. On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2008. pp. 112-113.

Thomas S. Szasz. The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. New York: Delta, 1961. p. 246.

"Lies are good for family and friends." Lisa Kogan. Oprah.com. Sept. 5, 2008.

"Inside the Lying Brain." M. Veera Pandiyan. The Star (Malaysia). Aug. 28, 2008.
Tucker Liebermanhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-26875770396365669732017-04-01T14:49:00.001-07:002017-04-01T14:49:21.997-07:00Quotes on perception and interpretation
Sen. J. William Fulbright:

"...people in different societies look at the same facts and "see" different things, that what they see, or think they see, is largely determined by what they expect to see.

The point is illustrated by an experiment in which a psychologist had two groups of schoolteachers, one Mexican, the other American, look into a device that simultaneously showed a picture of a bullfighter to one eye and a picture of a baseball player to the other. When asked what they had seen, most of the Mexicans said they had seen a bullfighter and most of the Americans said that they had seen a baseball player. Obviously, what each individual saw had a great deal to do with whether he was a Mexican or an American."

Steven Lukes:

"He recalled James Thurber's encouraging thoughts about the strange pleasure of going blind. As one's eyesight fails, the role of the external world in fixing what one sees declines while that of interpretation increases, so you only have to be optimistic for women to be attractive, buildings to be elegant, the sun to shine."

Tom Hayden:

"As Fritjof Capra pointed out in The Tao of Physics, the intellect in such Asian philosophy is a means to clear the way for the direct mystical experience of oneness, not a tool for endless filing of data."

Gary Zukav:

"During the Lebanese civil war, a story goes, a visiting American was stopped by a group of masked gunmen. One wrong word could cost him his life.
 'Are you Christian or Moslem?' they asked.
 'I am a tourist!' he cried.
 The way that we pose our questions often illusorily limits our responses."

Sources

Sen. J. William Fulbright. The Arrogance of Power. New York: Vintage Books, 1966. p. 176.

Steven Lukes. The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat. London, New York: Verso, 1995, reprinted 2000. p 2.

Tom Hayden. The Lost Gospel of the Earth: A Call for Renewing Nature, Spirit, and Politics. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996. p. 169.

Gary Zukav. The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1979. p. 286.
Tucker Liebermanhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-54378129061436589922017-03-01T17:10:00.000-08:002017-03-01T17:10:19.119-08:00Quotes on time as illusion
Lee Smolin:

"Is the flow of time something real, or might our sense of time passing be just an illusion that hides the fact that what is real is only a vast collection of moments?"

Robert Lanza, author of the book Biocentrism which lays out his theory of everything:

"But if you remove everything from space, what's left? Nothing. The same applies for time — you can't put it in a jar. You can't see through the bone surrounding your brain (everything you experience is information in your mind). Biocentrism tells us space and time aren't objects — they're the mind's tools for putting everything together."

William Poundstone:

"If you are sure that time is not running backward, ask yourself how you know this. You probably cite your memories of the past. It is now 1988. You have memories of experiences in 1987, 1986, 1985, etc.; you do not have memories of 1989, 1990, etc. But you would, for the moment, have the memories you do whether time was going forward or backward from 1988. The question is whether the moving finger of time adds to or deletes from this stock of memories. There is no way of telling!"

Nancy S. Atlas:

"Holidays, albeit imposed by man, provide us with the framework and opportunity to honor the individuals and the events that have shaped our lives, and might otherwise be taken for granted. Although the scheduling of leisure time might appear to be rigid and confining, it actually has a salubrious effect, as it relieves anxiety and reassures us that our goals can be met and our needs can be satisfied. Structuring time assuages the 'ought to' syndrome and sets the stage for 'free time' to be really free."

Matthew May:

"Still, customers visiting FAVI are often astounded at what they perceive to be a total lack of control. A favorite story Jean-François tells involves a customer's site inspection at FAVI: 'They asked to audit our procedures,' he says. 'They were not pleased because we had no measurement system for tracking late orders—nothing in place, no plan, no process, no structure in case of delay. They are a customer for over ten years, so I say, 'In that time, have we ever been late?' They say, 'No.' I say, 'Have we ever been early?' They say again, 'No.' And so I ask them why they want me to measure things that do not exist.' Good point."

Douwe Draaisma:

"In 1997, the psychologists Crawley and Pring performed an experiment in which the estimated time interval was compared precisely with the real time interval. They drew up a list of events that anyone in Britain even vaguely familiar with the news was bound to remember. ... The earliest event was the Queen's Silver Jubilee (1977); the most recent the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989). Next, Crawley and Pring asked their experimental subjects to give as nearly as possible the year and the month in which these events had occurred. The answers revealed an interesting difference to do with the subjects' age. Experimental subjects of middle age (between thirty-five and fifty years old) dated the events too recently, thus confirming the telescopy found in earlier experiments. But older subjects (on average aged about seventy) placed the events too far back in time. I was as if they had turned the telescope round, thus extending the interval.

'This can help to explain why time seems to fly by as we grow older', wrote Crawley and Pring. The underlying idea is probably that time in the subjectively longer period must have gone by more quickly. This conclusion shows how difficult it is to interpret the results of research on time perception. For something can also be said for the opposite conclusion. It is precisely those who think something happened three years ago when in fact it was five, who will exclaim, 'Gosh, how time flies.' The speeding up of the years seems to be due to telescopy rather than to reverse telescopy. Crawley and Pring's theory can only be saved by the assumption of a reverse connection between the overestimate of the duration of a period of time and its subjective tempo. That does indeed manifest itself with the quickened pace of a week on holiday, which upon one's return home seems longer than an ordinary week. However, in that case, both telescopy and reverse telescopy will make us feel that time is rushing past, and that robs them of any explanatory value."

Sources

Lee Smolin, quoted by Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence. New York: Penguin Group, 1999. p 25.

"What Happens When You Die? Evidence Suggests Time Simply Reboots." Robert Lanza, M.D. June 10, 2010. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/what-happens-when-you-die_b_596600.html Accessed June 12, 2010.

William Poundstone. Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles and the Frailty of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books, 1988. p. 66.

"The Structuring of Time." Nancy S. Atlas. Jewish Reporter (Massachusetts), February 2003.

Matthew E. May, In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing. New York: Broadway Books, 2009. pp. 128-129.

Douwe Draaisma. Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older: How Memory Shapes Our Past. (2001) Translated by Arnold and Erica Pomerans in 2004. Cambridge University Press, 2005. pp 216-217.
Tucker Liebermanhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-6295466795903690722017-02-26T13:38:00.000-08:002017-02-26T13:39:39.403-08:00'From Enemy to Asset: Israel's Moment of Regional Opportunity'

J Street national conference, Washington, D.C., Feb. 26, 2017

The panel "From Enemy to Asset: Israel's Moment of Regional Opportunity" was moderated by Attila Somfalvi, Political Analyst.

The three panelists:
Member of Knesset Akram Hasson, Kulanu Party
Brigadier General (Ret.) Israela Oron, Former Deputy National Security Advisor, Israel's National Security Council
Nadav Tamir, Director of International and Government Affairs, Peres and Associates Global Consulting

How should Israel approach peacemaking in the broader Middle East?

Should Israel first speak to other Arab countries about regional politics (as PM Netanyahu says he wants to do), or should Israel first speak to the Palestinians directly? Hasson said it is necessary to speak with the Palestinians directly and not assume that other nations will take the lead. Oron, by contrast, said that Israel shares security concerns with Arab countries that are moderate on these issues like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and "the marriage can happen only when they can bring the bride. The bride is the Palestinians." Tamir said "I don't think the Arabs will move without the Palestinians and I don't think the Palestinians will move without the Arabs. That's why I think it has to be synchronized."

Tamir said he preferred to refer to Israel as "the homeland for the Jewish people" because it is more welcoming and potentially inclusive of non-Jews than the term "Jewish state."

Tamir said in response to an audience question about the importance of promoting dialogue at the grassroots level: "I totally agree with you. It's not enough to do peace from the top-down; you have to do peace from the bottom-up." He also said he believes that the people will support a two-state solution if politicians lead the way.

Who should take responsibility for the past? For the future? Israelis, Palestinians, Americans?

In response to Somfalvi's question about whether it's appropriate to "blame the Palestinians" and ask for "concessions" from them, Oron conceded that "the Palestinians have a very fair share" of blame for the failure of negotiations. Hasson acknowledged that Palestinians have not been able to stop the tide of extremism among young people, and he also pointed the finger back at Israel. He said that Abu Mazen personally told him that his hands were politically tied as long as Palestinians continued to see Israeli military presence in Area A and Israeli construction in the West Bank. Oron said, "They are not in the position to cut deals with the Israelis" in part because they have a difficult economic condition and their leader Abu Mazen is not very powerful.

Tamir said that he preferred to avoid the "blame game." "I think all of us should do our work and then we can move forward. I actually think the project of Zionism was to make the Jewish people not the object of history but the subject of history...People in J Street have to work on the American scene." Hasson said, "I know Kerry spoke with Abu Mazen, and when he came to speak with Netanyahu, everything broke. For that reason, the game must start on our field."

Why is it important?

Tamir said, "If we cannot create a two-state solution, it's the end of Zionism. For me, there is nothing more important in my professional life." Oron said, "Basically, we are occupying millions of Palestinians and they don't have their own state...We are in a one-state for the last fifty years. The question is how can we make it more like a two-state, because the one-state is the end of the Zionist dream." The ideal would be to live in harmony with everyone in a single state, but "unfortunately, it's not practical."

A peace deal also has implications for Israel's reputation. Hasson said he believes that great leaders around the world will be reluctant to develop a relationship with Israel "without a solution for the Palestinians."

This panel was held Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017 at 3:15 p.m. Official panel description from the conference program:

"For decades, the Arab world cited the very existence of the state of Israel as the region's number one problem. Yet over the past decade, the regional dynamics have shifted dramatically. The Arab world's list of strategic challenges today is topped by Iran, extremism and the economic challenge posed by a massive generation of young people lacking economic opportunity and hope. Rather than being seen as a central threat, Israel today is perceived by regional players as a potentially key asset in addressing these challenges. Join us in exploring the opportunities and challenges Israel faces at this historic inflection point and whether, for Israel to take advantage of these strategic opportunities, it must first resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Tucker Liebermanhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-69588041466727948992017-02-26T12:00:00.000-08:002017-02-26T12:00:10.039-08:00'A Security-Driven, Two-State Process'

J Street national conference, Washington, D.C., Feb. 26, 2017

The panel "A Security-Driven, Two-State Process" was presented by Israel Policy Forum, chaired by Dr. Michael Koplow, Policy Director, Israel Policy Forum, and moderated by Ilan Goldenberg, Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security.

Introductory remarks

Ilan Goldenberg, Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security demonstrated an outline of a "final security system." The purpose is to show the public what it would look like, to assist future negotiators, and to set the goal so it is possible to take steps to reach it. A key parameter is placing some limit on Israel's military presence in the West Bank while still upholding Israel's right of its own national defense. It is also important to establish timetables, or at least to establish rules for ongoing collaboration on how to schedule implementation of each step of the agreement.

The three panelists:

Rolly Gueron, Ret. Mossad Division Chief: How to get from the "status quo" to a "permanent status agreement"? Avoid ideology and pursue "a constructive dialogue with reality." First, it is important to address security issues. Taking a long-term view, this means, in part, addressing the difficult conditions under which many people grow up. There is a three-fold proposal of "security measures," "civil-economic measures," and "policy clarifications." The goal is a Zionist state that is both Jewish and democratic, and any means to that end is "welcomed." The two-state solution is one possible means to that end. It is not itself an end.

MK Omer Bar Lev, Zionist Union: An agreement may need to deal with Gaza first and then deal with the West Bank. Today Hamas has a single leader; whether that is convenient for Israel can be debated. Most Israelis do not trust that they have a partner for peace. The international community also needs to be convinced that Israel "does not want to rule the Palestinians." He prefers the slogan: "Israel should be a secure democratic state with a clear Jewish majority." In the first stage of separating the Israeli and Palestinian states, there would be certain key steps, such as Israel ceasing to build in contested areas and Palestinians taking responsibility for governance in areas previously under Israel control.

Brigadier General (ret.) Israela Oron, Former Deputy National Security Advisor, Israel's National Security Council: "The 'security argument' is used all the time in order to make the peace plan fail. It's not as if we don't have serious concerns about security." However, "Israel really enjoys a very good period of security. We really don't have serious security issues that we cannot really deal with." She said, "A temporary plan that is dealing only with the current situation, from my point of view, doesn't give a serious answer....We cannot talk about security plans disconnected from a peace plan." There are many needs, such as a neutral third party involved in policing a future arrangement, but this in itself is not a sufficient plan.

Panelists' remarks in response to audience questions at the microphone

Bar Lev: There needs to be an ongoing process of convincing everyone involved that it is possible and progressing toward a two-state solution. Leaders need to demonstrate that it can be achieved without any negative impact on security. "We can and should begin a two-state solution today."

Gueron: Israel should suggest economic measures to improve life in East Jerusalem. No more radical steps are likely right now. "Any radical step in Jerusalem, by the way, can bring about hell."

Gueron: "I don't think it's fair to compare the Israeli extremists and the Palestinian extremists. These are different volumes and, I would say, different atrocities." "There is no ultimate solution to extremism...and nobody is immune to extremism." The first step is separation. Israelis and Palestinians cannot live "inside one another."

Bar Lev: If everyone in Jerusalem is allowed to vote, "we'll have a Palestinian mayor in Jerusalem." The borders of Jerusalem were drawn hastily after the '67 war. "It's not [merely] a stigma, it's true: We are occupying the West Bank."

Gueron: "Politics of morality in the Middle East do not work...Obviously, it's not moral to occupy territories, but it's not moral for a nation to commit suicide."

Oron: "I don't know of any polite way to characterize what's going on in the West Bank other than 'occupation, occupation, occupation.'"

More detailed security plans

Available at TwoStateSecurity.org

This panel was held Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017 at 1:45 p.m. Official panel description from the conference program:

"Engage with top Israeli and American security experts as they address Israel's security needs, including the preservation of a two-state solution. Come hear about two complementary plans designed to ensure Israel's security needs are met through a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Commanders for Israel's Security (CIS), a non-partisan movement comprised of former senior Israeli security officials, will discuss "Security First," a plan to improve Israel's security and international standing that preserves conditions for a two-state agreement. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) will then present "Security System for the Two-State Solution." Join us to hear and discuss responses to the plans from veteran senior Israeli security and policy officials."
Tucker Liebermanhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-11474559730075529002017-02-26T10:35:00.000-08:002017-02-26T12:00:24.166-08:00'Jerusalem 2017: Crisis and Opportunity'

J Street national conference, Washington, D.C., Feb. 26, 2017

The panel "Jerusalem 2017: Crisis and Opportunity" was presented by the organization Ir Amim. The session was livestreamed at conference.jstreet.org.

Introductory remarks

The three panelists:

Hillel Schenker, Co-Editor, Palestine-Israel Journal: He has a "utopian" vision of Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel, and though it may not be achievable, he believes that "all three faiths should play a role" in shaping Israel's future. "The great advantage of Tel Aviv is that it has no holy sites to argue over," he said. He divides his time between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were there is more religious conflict. "Today, most Israelis do not go to East Jerusalem."

Yudith Oppenheimer, Executive Director, Ir Amim: The Palestine-Israel Journal and Ir Amim have a joint project for young people called "Empowering East and West Jerusalem." About 40 percent of Jerusalem's residents are not citizens of Israel. People are aware that the prospects for a two-state solution are dimming, which is unfortunate because "any other option is not a resolution" to the conflict. She says that her utopian vision is different from Schenker's: "In my dream, Jerusalem is given back to its residents" and the city's future is worked out on a grassroots level.

Ziad Abu Zayyad, Co-Editor, Palestine-Israel Journal: It's necessary to recognize that Jerusalem is important for Arabs (Christians and Muslims alike) and for Israelis. Unfortunately, Israeli policy aims to convert Jerusalem into a Jewish city, with "complete denial" of Arab rights that has included demolishing Arab houses. "The Israelis make a big mistake if they underestimate the importance of Jerusalem to the Arabs, and the Arabs make the same mistake if they underestimate the importance of Jerusalem to the Jews and to the Israelis." He is worried about the possibility of Jerusalem as an "international city" which he thinks will open it up to lawlessness. He wants the residents of Jerusalem to come up with their own solutions.

Panelists' remarks in response to audience questions at the microphone

Abu Zayyad: "I am in favor of building bridges, not walls. The wall is separating the Arabs from the Arabs." His own village has been split in two by the wall, preventing commerce even between two areas that are both within East Jerusalem. "This wall is a segregation wall. It's claimed to be for security, but it's not possible."

Oppenheimer: "We see the problems getting more and more extreme, and the methods used against the residents of East Jerusalem is getting harsher and harsher. The house demolition doubled itself this year."

Schenker: It might be productive to have two American embassies, one in West Jerusalem for Israel and one in East Jerusalem for the Palestinians, but just having one American embassy in Jerusalem would be problematic.

Abu Zayyad: Some Arabs build without a permit because they are expensive and difficult to get. Housing is needed because the population is growing. They take a risk that their houses will be demolished.

Oppenheimer: The status of Palestinians in East Jerusalem needs an answer, as well as the "democratic challenge" that their collective existence poses to Israeli society. "Government is involved in all level of life in East Jerusalem, so to create that dual system so that they can take part, so-called, in municipal elections, which has very limited effect on their life, and not take part in national elections — that is a situation rejected by the Palestinians and with very good cause."

Abu Zayyad: "Jerusalem is the heart of the conflict. There will never be any Palestinian state without Jerusalem. There will be no Palestinian leader who will dare to sign any agreement without Jerusalem." He says he, personally, is too afraid to travel to West Jerusalem anymore. There are some attacks by Jews against Arabs. "The situation is not normal."

Oppenheimer: A new generation of children in Jerusalem is growing up in poverty. Today Jerusalem needs not only the value of "humanism" but also that of "pragmatism."

Oppenheimer: "We share the vision of an open city."

Abu Zayyad: "Our politics are poisoning our life." It is a dream, but it's not realistic, to have Israeli-Palestinian youth integration. The youth project referred to on this panel "is a drop in that ocean." Many Palestinians are "offended" by the idea of "normalizing relations with the occupation."

Schenker: His "realistic" vision for Jerusalem is a city that serves as the capital of two states.

This panel was held Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017 at 12:15 p.m. Official panel description from the conference program:

"Jerusalem is constantly in the news, usually with headlines about violence and tension between Israelis and Palestinians. Talk of unilaterally moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem has sparked concern of adding fuel to the flames. The future of Jerusalem is one of the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and determining its future will be one of the most daunting tasks in achieving a negotiated peace. Join two Jerusalem-based NGOs, Ir Amim and the Palestine-Israel Journal, to discuss the possibilities and learn about their work together to empower Jerusalem's youth."
Tucker Liebermanhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-66072939256406825172017-02-26T09:06:00.000-08:002017-02-26T09:12:50.540-08:00'Daylight to No Daylight: Switching Gears on US-Israel Relations'

J Street national conference, Washington, D.C., Feb. 26, 2017

The panel "Daylight to No Daylight: Switching Gears on US-Israel Relations" was moderated by Noa Landau, editor for Haaretz English Edition.

Introductory remarks

The three panelists:

Ambassador Alon Pinkas, Former Israeli Consul General to New York: "There are two ways of looking at this [U.S.-Israel] relationship: One is that it has been normalized, which is something that we should take as a positive. It is no longer unique, it is just a very strong alliance, and every time there's friction, we shouldn't panic and assume that the sky is falling. The other approach is more ominous....it is that the United States is in the process of reprioritizing its foreign policy interests" and is deprioritizing the Middle East.

Ilan Goldenberg, Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security: He noted that there are still some key leadership roles in the new U.S. administration for which no one has been nominated. Furthermore, the Trump administration isn't following a normal process of listening to advisors and then making an executive decision in favor of a single clear policy and sticking to it. "There's no clarity what's it's going to mean for Israel." Although "part of me takes comfort in the dysfunctionality and their inability to get things done, if you really oppose some of the initiatives," he said he worries about what will happen when the next crisis is not internally manufactured but rather external: "What happens when there's a real shock to the system?"

Khaled Elgindy, Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution: He noted a "lack of clarity" on the new U.S. administration's policy about settlements and a two-state solution. He mentioned Trump's comment about his willingness to go with either one state or two states, depending on what the parties want — that is, what Netanyahu wants. "I'm not sure he's [Trump is] entirely aware of what he's deferring to."

Further discussion

Pinkas: On the subject of David Friedman, who has been nominated to become the U.S. ambassador to Israel: "I would not ascribe too much importance to Mr. Friedman's views" in favor of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. He believes Friedman "confuses two simple things": He will be "the American ambassador to Israel, not the West Bank's ambassador to Washington. And the sooner he realizes this...the better for everyone.

Elgindy: "During the Reagan area, there was this notion of 'strategic convergence'" about cooperation between powers...It didn't really work then and I think it's unlikely to succeed now. Arab states are not going to go along with the idea of bypassing the Palestinians." They're "going to make their views known wherever they differ." He also said that, whereas President Obama contacted Palestinian leadership on one of his first days in office, now, under the Trump administration, he fears that now "we deal with the Palestinian leadership on a purely utilitarian basis" when it is relevant to security issues.

Goldenberg: Trump's statement on settlements encourages Israel to expand any settlement that they already have, which will make it harder to eventually move people out of the settlements in the service of a two-state solution, although "to his credit," Trump expressed opposition to new settlements. "Who's driving policy is still a little bit unclear." He also said that the Trump administration's comment that "Iran is on notice" is acceptable, but that it's important to know what one means by that and to have a plan for consequences when the line is crossed. Many Iranians already believe that they got the short end of the stick on the nuclear deal with the U.S., and Trump's "provocative" comments in this regard may not help international relations.

Pinkas: "There won't be a deal — not to disappoint anyone here, not because of Donald Trump. There won't be a deal because if you look at it historically — since 1967 in fact — or since the Oslo agreement was signed not far from here in 1993, the one enduring thing that Israelis and Palestinians always had in common and always stood side by side about is that it's always the Americans' fault. It's always the President's fault." He called this "an abundance of excuses". "There is nothing that Donald Trump can do [for peace in the Middle East] that John Kerry didn't try to do," or that Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush before him didn't try to do. Furthermore, he says the Israeli-U.S. relationship is "unnatural," not part of the essential order of things, and thus may become obsolete: "Our shared values exist, but the relationship that emerged and grew into an alliance is a Cold War thing." The U.S. has decreasing interest in the Middle East in part because the U.S. is approaching "energy independence." "We know what a two-state solution is going to look like," but the Israeli and Palestinian parties don't seem "willing, capable or intent on doing anything to get there." The U.S. can do little in this situation.

Goldenberg: Netanyahu rejected a regional peace plan; the coalition government he built does not support it. Netanyahu is not likely to change his efforts in this regard.

Elgindy: "I was betting against the Kerry negotiations." He said he thought they had "almost no chance of success" in part because Israel "was occupying the other party that it is talking to." He added: "The United States has a responsibility in those repeated failures because they have not played the role of a mediator in trying to somehow level the playing field."

Panelists' remarks in response to audience questions at the microphone

Elgindy: The United States hasn't accepted the concept of "Palestinian agency," treating them as an "object" in the peace talks and "punishing them for going to the U.N. He said: "Once Palestinians put their own house in order, that in itself is proof that they are a partner."

Pinkas: "Israel needs to think hard, and do everything it can, to maintain" its unique diplomatic relationship with the US. "From an American point of view, this has become...an issue in the sense that...from an American point of view, how does it differ from relations with Great Britain, or France, or Canada?" The peace process needs to be the central issue. "If our [Israel's] only added value" to the United States is a partner in the war on terrorism, it's no longer unique. Trump could easily lose his patience.

Goldenberg: He worked for Kerry and he believes that the importance of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal was a "deep personal belief" for Kerry. "It is a holy grail in some ways. It's the diplomatic holy grail."

Pinkas: "The Trump administration could conceivably be one of the first ones that will not care about this."

Pinkas: It is "silliness" only held by the Israeli government that peace can be achieved while "bypassing the Palestinians." There is a possibility that "the two-state model cannot be preserved," but while "there are many flaws in it, I see more flaws by burying it."

Elgindy: "The real test of when a two-state solution is not feasible is when one or more of the parties do not want it anymore." The "fragile and precarious" political consensus (by Israeli politicians, not necessarily by the Israeli public) in favor of the two-state solution "has collapsed" in Israel. In the United States, language in favor of it has been "expunged" from the platform of "the Republican party that controls both houses of Congress and the White House...If nobody wants two states, you're throwing a party for people who don't show up, essentially."

Pinkas: He doesn't see "seriousness" in the Trump administration on foreign policy issues in comparison to past presidents. In response to someone who asked what news stories he thinks the concerned public should focus on ("What are we missing?" the audience member asked), Pinkas said: "Oh, you're not missing anything. The abundance of bad news is such that you don't know where to start. You're not missing anything because right now it's like a hiatus of sorts. Right now, everyone is trying to figure out what this administration is about. And it's not just the policies. They're trying to figure out whether they [the Trump administration] carry the credibility" of previous administrations. It's "an administration that begins with a credibility problem. Let's wait and see."
Goldenberg: He said that "the members of the Knesset are still two-staters." Polled support for a two-state solution jumps when the question specifies a situation in which the other side agrees to the deal.

Pinkas: "All in all, American public opinion is pro-Israeli but there are cracks in this support for a variety of reasons." This is happening among American Jews due to how non-Orthodoxy is treated in Israel, and the American public in general is "fatigued" by involvement in foreign conflicts that aren't perceived to serve American interests.

Elgindy: Post-9/11 "polarization" continues. The far right sees a dualistic "battle" between good and evil, while the far left "questions Israel's role in the region".

This panel was held Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017 at 10:45 a.m. Official panel description from the conference program:

"American policy toward Israel appears set to undergo one of its biggest shifts in recent memory. President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry focused on resolving Middle East conflicts diplomatically — whether with Iran or between Israel and the Palestinians. Their view was that the US-Israel relationship did not require full and constant alignment on views and policy. The new administration — symbolized by the President's choice of David Friedman as Ambassador to Israel — has signaled a clear intent to reverse course. It has de-emphasized pursuit of the two-state solution and re-surfaced the principle that there should be "no daylight" between the US and Israel. It may well take action that — intentionally or not — undercuts the Iran nuclear agreement. Join our panel of experts in exploring what this rapid shift means for Israel, for the region and for American interests."
Tucker Liebermanhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-41573430856272609432017-02-26T07:13:00.002-08:002017-02-26T08:44:01.463-08:00'Between the Lines: Deciphering a New US Approach to the Broader Middle East'

J Street national conference, Washington, D.C., Feb. 26, 2017

The panel "Between the Lines: Deciphering a New US Approach to the Broader Middle East" was moderated by Nahal Toosi, Foreign Affairs Correspondent for POLITICO.

Introductory remarks

The three panelists:

MK Akram Hasson, Kulanu Party: "It's very hard to have only two states. I believe that we need three states because Hamas will not accept any relation between Israelis and the Palestinians."

Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, Director, Arab-Israeli Conflict Program, United States Institute of Peace: "We've had a long history of administrations getting involved in this conflict with the best of intentions and then getting stuck." She said, "There is a body of 'lessons learned' out there." The new U.S. president goes back and forth on whether he endorses a two-state or a one-state solution, perhaps based in part on what he thinks the parties want. "If you want to look at what the parties would actually be able to agree to," there is a "consistent shared vision" of a two-state solution.

Barbara Slavin, Acting Director, Future of Iran Initiative, Atlantic Council: Iran's nuclear deal with the United States produced with the Obama administration doesn't forbid Iran from launching ballistic missiles, although there is a separate agreement that addresses this. This nuclear policy has not yet changed significantly since the transition from the Obama administration one month ago. However, the Trump administration's travel ban "disproportionately affected Iranians," approximately 30,000 of whom visit the United States every year for reasons like academic study and family visits. "Donald Trump is fulfilling their worst expectations about how he would treat the Iranian people (as opposed to the Iranian government)."

Further discussion

Hasson alleged, although he acknowledged that it may come as a "surprise" to many in the room, that Iran sends fighters to the Syrian civil war and supports Daesh (ISIS). "We know about many acts and agreements under the table that Iran did." Slavin responded: "I think Iran benefits in some ways from the existence of Daesh...but to say that Iran is directly supporting Daesh I think is a step too far.

Kurtzer-Ellenbogen said that "the idea of a regional approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a new one."

Hasson, who said he was a member of Likud for 22 years until 2006 and that he has spoken with the Palestinian leader Abu Mazen, said, "I am sure that Israel must lead that [i.e. the two-state solution], because we are a very strong country." He liked the policies of previous Israeli PMs Sharon and Olmert, but has reservations about the current PM Netanyahu. "Our prime minister says every day that he has no partner on the Palestinian side." Hasson believes that the Palestinian leader Abu Mazen's problem is that "he has no strong Palestinian leaders with him."

In response to Toosi's question, "What does everything that happened since Trump won mean for Bashar al-Assad and the civil war in Syria?", Hasson said that he expects that Syria will split into two countries. It will be "impossible," he said, for Syrians to reconcile and live in the country the way it was before. Slavin acknowledged that Trump's alleged "secret plan" for Syria is still unknown. "Once Raqqa falls, I don't know what Trump's interests in Syria will be." She added, "This is probably one of the first priorities for H. R. McMaster, the new [U.S.] security advisor." She anticipated a "de facto" division of Syria into "dispersed" areas after the fall of Raqqa. "Assad in the long term I think is untenable. The man is a brute."

In response to Toosi's question about whether leaders have to "hedge their bets" in preparation for the new U.S. president's unpredictability, Kurtzer-Ellenbogen said it's unhelpful "to try to analyze every tweet in terms of its implications for policy" and that countries generally don't "know or feel secure" about what the U.S. president will do. Hasson said "I like" his unpredictability and expressed a desire to allow the president some time to reveal and implement his policies. "Maybe he has a new policy that we don't know. Maybe it will work very good."

Slavin spoke of the potential danger of Iranian nuclear escalation and said "I agree with Akram [Hasson] that many of those actions have been destabilizing." She perceives an increased risk of "actual hostilities as opposed to verbal hostilities."

Panelists' remarks in response to written audience questions read by the moderator

Kurtzer-Ellenbogen: "I think we should still be looking toward the Arab Peace Initiative, and looking to it not just as a static document" but as a starting point for new discussions by Middle Eastern countries.

Slavin: "I think it's very encouraging that he [John Bolton] has not been chosen for a major role" in the new U.S. administration. She said that "Trump is not a regime-changer" and that his exclusion from a major role is "a rare bright spot."

Kurtzer-Ellenbogen: "I unfortunately don't share the optimism that the war in Syria will end soon...If we get to a point of stabilization...then, with Syria being there, right on the border, it would have a key role to play" in any Israeli-Palestinian peace process, but she thinks it will be a long time before Syria is ready to do this.

Hasson: "We see what happened in Iraq, Sudan, Syria and all these countries. It doesn't give big hope for our future." He indicated a preference for incremental change in human rights. "To take care of human rights in the Arab countries, it's not something very simple." He said that attempts for immediate change sometimes backfire. Of the current president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Hasson said: "We must give him big support and give him the time to succeed."

Slavin: The upcoming Iranian elections are unpredictable. An American return to the Bush-era "'axis of evil' rhetoric...always helps the hardliners." She suspects that President Hassan Rouhani will not be reelected because "I think it's in the Iranian interest to show a reasonable face to the world when the United States is showing one that isn't very reasonable."

Last question: What would you say to Trump?

Kurtzer-Ellenbogen: She said she would advise the U.S. administration to listen to its allies and "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater...There are things to be learned from past administrations: mistakes and successes. Radical change is not always the best approach, especially with foreign policy."
Hasson: "I need to see you like a father for everybody around the world."
Slavin: "Don't reinstate the travel ban...The Iranian people are not your enemy."

This panel was held Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017 at 9 a.m. Official panel description from the conference program:

"For several years now, US policy in the Middle East has been caught between a crying need for American leadership and an American desire to disengage. The new president faces tough policy choices — on Syria, Iraq, Iran and more — all made more difficult by some of his rhetoric and his desire to reset relations with other global powers. How this administration decides to wield US power in the region will have significant impact on both American and Israeli security. Join us for an exploration of the opportunities and pitfalls as the United States navigates a path forward through the intertwined and often contradictory geopolitics of the Middle East."
Tucker Liebermanhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-87300119096526727452017-02-11T12:57:00.001-08:002017-02-11T12:57:33.674-08:00I still don't know why you voted for him (response to op-ed)
Dear Chicago Tribune,

Help me understand why this was a publishable op-ed. I can't believe the amount of miscounsel that was given in fewer than 500 words. At least I got a new manifesto out of my repeated attempts to process it.

"Commentary: I am a deplorable, and I'm happy I voted for Trump," by Jeff Bust, Chicago Tribune, Feb. 3, 2017.

To the writer:</>
I don't get tired of sharing ideas about values. Clearly some values are still relevant to you, too, because you are writing op-eds about them. I'm sorry you are "weary" almost before you've picked up the pen. If you continue to insist that your subject matter isn't important, you can stop writing and I'll stop reading.

When I vote, my motivation is not to privately feel good about my vote. My motivation is to point toward policies that I think will actually help others. When others protest the policies I like, I don't see that as an attempt to make me feel bad about my vote. Protests usually aim to fix the problems we have right now with our government and prevent bad policy. Even if some protesters do want to shame me, and if they succeed, it doesn't matter very much, since my goal is not to feel good about a vote I've already cast but rather to find new ways to help people and continue making the country a good place to live. If I decide I've made a political mistake, I can move on and move forward. It isn't essential for me to feel good about a past vote, and I'm not under the illusion that ossifying smugness for its own sake would help me or anyone else in the event that my political beliefs were criticized.

It isn't clear to me why you voted for someone you say you don't like, why you are happy at having done so, and how this specific, peculiar happiness helps you or anyone else. You say you wanted a president who does something. All presidents do something. You could have voted for a candidate you liked. If you would like to see a different kind of candidate, you can say what that person would be like.

Your voice has always counted. It counts even when you don't win. You are not entitled to get your way all the time. You are still significant when someone else gets their way. It doesn't especially impress me that you personally prefer to express your political opinion without costumes or signs; if you were more of an oddball, your beliefs would still matter the same amount to me.

You are the only one who sees the way things really are? How did you arrive at that vision?

I don't think we need to balance the budget before we engage in debate about values. I think we need values to determine how to balance the budget. I think the values need to be "living": adjustable and debatable. We can, at the same time, philosophize and pay our bills; indeed, we must. Neither philosophy nor the budget is ever completed. Anything we put off until these magna opera are completed will never see daylight in our lifetimes.

Why the gratuitous adjective "dorm-room" before "debates on philosophy and injustice"? Why "empty" before "values-centered debates"? If philosophy were really so juvenile and empty, why would you want to engage in it ever, even as a secondary interest on that far-off day when the budget is finally balanced?

Very few are idlers by ideology; most value the concept of work. If you perceive that others find fault with you for having a job, you might want to examine where that perception is coming from.

Very few are ascetics; most value some degree of comfort. If you perceive that others find fault with you for seeking comfort, you might want to examine if they really object to what they see as excess, especially at others' expense.

Very few lecture others about insensitivity for no reason. If people routinely tell you how insensitive you are, maybe there's something to be learned there.

Nearly everyone works in some capacity, inside or outside the home, and even those who don't work still worry about who will pay for what needs to be done. It is important to think about who foots the bill, yet I am skeptical that you really only consent to activities that you can pay for all by yourself. Many expenses are collective; someone paid for the road on which you walk, bike, or drive. The fact that we have government debt for you to complain about suggests that something got bought that you did not pay for. And what if you could no longer work or if you could no longer earn or save at your current level? How would you make decisions then? How would you value yourself? How would you expect others to value you?

For similar reasons, one should less readily judge immigrants (or anyone) according to their economic contributions. First, why should anyone base the welcoming and acceptance of any other human being in any significant measure according to whether they can work and pay taxes? Some people are disabled. Some people contribute by methods that do not involve money — they are caregivers or artists or simply fine people who happen not to have jobs. Second, I thought you lived your life based on "what I can pay for," so why do you care if immigrants make economic contributions? To whom should they contribute except themselves? Is it the case that you want them to contribute to you, but you don't want to contribute to them? Third, if you expect someone to make significant material contributions to the country, are you prepared to grant them the right to vote?

You suggest that government overspending is worse than all other value failures combined: arrogance, carelessness, overcompetition, insensitivity. I disagree. Spending money is not the worst evil. Money exists to be spent. It is instrumentally useful in the service of values. If there are credible proposals to help remedy the consequences of racism past and present and if those proposals require spending some money, surely this is one of the best uses of money one can dream up.

You say that no one has a right to send a financial bill to future generations, but you suggest it's perfectly all right to leave them with a climate change problem, due to your "practical sense of priority." Certain facts and values can present an argument that future generations will need a planet that is livable for humans and other forms of life more than they will need money. If the planet's natural environment is disregulated, money can't easily fix the issue. Global warming needs to be a high priority for practical reasons. If others criticize you for deprioritizing it, maybe it's not for the abstract reason that they see you as putting practicality or frugality over ideals but because they think you have your facts wrong about the relevance of climate change.

And on a practical level, we do have to bill future generations for something, because that is the way financing works in the actual world right now. We bill the future. We don't have its consent. We can pay off some the debt that previous generations left us with and we can be judicious about the causes for which we want to bill the future, but charging nothing whatsoever is probably not a realistic option. Also, because future generations by definition cannot weigh in yet, we don't know for a fact whether they would consent to or even prefer us to rack up some bills on their behalf. They might want us to pay (or force them to pay) to prevent another kind of problem for them. They don't exist yet so we can't ask them. We may not have the right to make choices that affect others now and in the future, but we are nonetheless inescapably faced with that reality and those decisions.

No one can erase or redo history. No one can give a personal mea culpa for something that happened before they were born. To be anti-racist is not to attempt those things that are impossible on principle. It is simply to care about people today, to acknowledge history as needed, and to try to move forward together, making the most of the resources we have.

It is not obvious that your taxes are used to "make...speeches and buy votes." You have to build a case for that and explain what you mean. Neither is it clear whether you object to all government-funded healthcare, since you say that you support abortion rights and that you merely oppose the idea that you would have to pay for anyone's abortion. Presumably, you also oppose the idea that you would have to pay for anyone else's child and that child's healthcare for years to come, since money, not anti-abortion principle, is the driver here.

It is not obvious why being an "intellectual," an "organizer," or a philosopher ("professional value arbitrator") is a bad thing. All of these skills are useful for writing coherent op-eds. "Tree huggers," literally environmentalists who protest in trees, have never run the show in Washington and you have nothing to fear from them at this time.

I didn't call you deplorable. You said "I am deplorable."

Thank you for explaining what your vote meant to you.
Tucker Liebermanhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-25673379758720330452017-02-09T20:19:00.000-08:002017-02-09T20:19:42.606-08:00A new presidential directive to 'go shopping'
Today one might feel sentimental about the speeches given by then-President George W. Bush in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. On Sept. 20, he addressed the nation:

"Americans are asking: What is expected of us? I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight, and I ask you to be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat...I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy. Terrorists attacked a symbol of American prosperity. They did not touch its source. America is successful because of the hard work, and creativity, and enterprise of our people. These were the true strengths of our economy before September 11th, and they are our strengths today."

Again, on Sept. 27:

"When they struck, they wanted to create an atmosphere of fear. And one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry. It's to tell the traveling public: Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed."

In such a moment of crisis and confusion, many people craved greater moral leadership or more explicit instructions on what they could do to help others, and thus Bush was roundly mocked for having told the nation to "go shopping," as his words were commonly paraphrased.

But probably no president has ever told the nation to go shopping the way Donald Trump has just done.

 Donald Trump with his daughter Ivanka at a campaign rally in New Hampshire, ahead of the February 2016 New Hampshire primaries. Creative Commons 2.0. Wikimedia Commons.

In early February 2017, Ivanka Trump's clothing line was dropped by Nordstrom while other stores like TJX Companies and Belk have said they will scale back their promotions of the line. Ivanka's father tweeted on Feb. 8: "My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom." This was retweeted by @POTUS, the Twitter account of the office of the President. The next morning, the president's counselor Kellyanne Conway spoke from the White House to the Fox & Friends television show: "Go buy Ivanka's stuff, is what I would tell you. I hate shopping, but I am going to go get some myself today. This is just — it's a wonderful line, I own some of it, I'm just gonna give a free commercial here, go buy it today, you can buy it online."

Laurel Raymond explained that Conway's comments "appear to violate federal ethics law, which prohibits the endorsement of products by federal officials." Jill Disis quoted Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) in his letter to the House Oversight Committee chair: "This appears to be a textbook violation of government ethics laws and regulations enacted to prevent the abuse of an employee's government position."

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the use of @POTUS was appropriate:

"This is less about his family's business, and an attack on his daughter. He ran for president, he won, he's leading this country. I think for people to take out their concern for his actions or executive orders on members of his family, he has every right to stand up for his family and applaud their business activities, their success. When it comes to his family, I think he's been very clear about what they've accomplished. And for someone to take out their concern for his policies on a family member of his is just not acceptable, and the president has every right as a father to stand up for them."

As for Conway's comments, Spicer said she was "counseled on that subject, and that's it."

Disis quoted the opinion of Larry Noble, general counsel of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center: "He [the president] should not be promoting his daughter's line, he should not be attacking a company that has business dealings with his daughter, and it just shows the massive amount of problems we have with his business holdings and his family's business holdings."

If there were a crisis, what would we be asked to buy then?
 Tucker Liebermanhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-13012054785747411012017-02-07T20:33:00.002-08:002017-02-11T18:58:34.234-08:00False claims by the Trump administration
Fake protests, journalists suppressing info about terrorism, a rising murder rate...and other things that aren't happening.

..........

Americans paid to protest?

Jen Hayden wrote:

"Republican Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner casually mentioned he believed the people turning up at his office and Colorado-area protests were 'paid protesters.' So did a Tennessee state senator, who provided evidence that was easily debunked and became an internet joke.

Now the White House itself is latching on to the laughable and insulting notion that these massive protests are the result of 'professional paid protesters.' This must be the largest top secret jobs program in the history of the world."

"Totally detached from reality, White House spokesman says protesters are 'paid professionals'," Jen Hayden, Daily Kos, Feb. 6, 2017.

..........

Terrorist attacks 'not even being reported'?

The president told military leaders at U.S. Central Command on Feb. 6: "All over Europe, it's happening. It's gotten to a point where it's not even being reported. And in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that." Press secretary Sean Spicer said, "We'll provide a list later" and then produced a typo-ridden list of 78 incidents 'executed or inspired' by IS over the previous two years.

The BBC had this response:

"Before the list was published, press secretary Sean Spicer said there were 'several instances' of attacks that had not gained sufficient media coverage (without specifying which fell into that category).

We have reproduced the list below, explaining in each case what happened and whether we reported on it.

Just because the BBC covered an attack does not mean that incident was not under-reported, although it is unclear whether Mr Trump was referring to US or global news organisations.

Some terrorist incidents do get more coverage than others, a point hotly debated on social media."

Of the large number of attacks worldwide, Philip Bump wrote in the Washington Post: "Not every one of those attacks made your local nightly newscast. But filtering what to cover is very different than suppressing information."

"White House struggles to defend Trump's allegations of a cover-up," Steve Benen, MSNBC, Feb. 7, 2017.

"Trump says terror attacks 'under-reported': Is that true?" BBC, Feb. 7, 2017.

"President Trump is now speculating that the media is covering up terrorist attacks," Philip Bump, Washington Post, Feb. 6, 2017.

..........

Such as the Bowling Green Massacre?

On Jan. 29, Kellyanne Conway mentioned "the Bowling Green attack on our brave soldiers" to TMZ and "the Bowling Green massacre" to Cosmopolitan. Ben Mathis-Lilley explained that "what Conway was (sort of) referring to was the 2011 arrest in Bowling Green, Kentucky, of two Iraqi men who were caught in an FBI sting operation trying to send money and weapons to al-Qaida in Iraq, the group that became ISIS. Both men admitted to having used IEDs against U.S. troops in Iraq before they were admitted to the U.S. as refugees. They were both sentenced to long prison terms." On Feb. 2, she mentioned 'the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre' to MSNBC and was widely mocked for it. Philip Bump said that the laughter was "an undue amount, given the likelihood that her comments were a mistake rather than an intentional lie. Trump's comments [about the media suppressing information about terrorist attacks] are of an entirely different order and magnitude."

"Conway Had Mentioned Imaginary Bowling Green Attack Twice Before She 'Misspoke' About It on MSNBC," Ben Mathis-Lilley, Slate, Feb. 6, 2017.

"President Trump is now speculating that the media is covering up terrorist attacks," Philip Bump, Washington Post, Feb. 6, 2017.

..........

Murder rate higher than ever?

On Feb. 7, the president told sheriffs from the National Sheriffs Association that "the murder rate in our country is the highest it's been in 47 years" and said that reporters weren't covering this problem. Tom Jackman pointed out that the opposite is actually true; the rate is "almost at its lowest point" for that time period, according to FBI data, which shows that the murder rate is "less than half the murder rate of 1980."

On Feb. 8, Sen. Rick Santorum told CNN host Poppy Harlow that he agreed with the president's general concern about urban violence, despite not having facts to support it. "I'm not going to defend Donald Trump's recitation of the facts," Santorum said. "I think Trump speaks more from emotional and how he's feeling than he does necessarily being bound by all the facts. That's one of his characteristics. It's not a strong one, it's not one that helps him in the debate."

"Trump makes false statement about U.S. murder rate to sheriffs' group," Tom Jackman, Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2017.

..........

Sam Waterston wrote for the Washington Post on Jan. 31:

"The great issue of today is lying — constant lying in public. Lying is the ally of faction [i.e. partisanship] and, since President Donald Trump's rise to power, it is the greater danger. Yes, the word is lying — not negotiation, salesmanship, bluster, attention-getting, delusion, deception, braggadocio, exaggeration, bullying, alternative facts or any other euphemism. Once, President John F. Kennedy could say that our national problems were no longer ideological but technical. Lying on a grand scale has reversed that.

* * *

By the frequency of his lying, Trump has revealed a truth we have avoided confronting: Like partisanship, regular and habitual lying is an existential threat to us, to our institutions, our memories, our understanding of now and of the future, to the great American democratic experiment, and to the planet. It blurs the truth, subverts trust, interferes with thought, and destroys clarity. It drives us to distraction."

 Tucker Liebermanhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-86155949795128082972017-02-02T19:09:00.003-08:002017-02-02T19:09:37.567-08:00So-called 'religious freedom' order would allow discrimination based on sexuality and gender
On Jan. 30, 2017, LGBTQ Nation claimed several anonymous sources were reporting a proposed executive order by the Trump administration that "will allow for discrimination in a number of areas, including employment, social services, business, and adoption." White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, asked that same day by a reporter if an executive order to curtail LGBT rights would be forthcoming, said only, "I'm not getting ahead of the executive orders that we may or may not issue...we have nothing on that front now." Deputy Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham reiterated his position, writing that "we don't want to get ahead of the EO/As [executive orders and actions] that are coming, but that isn't the plan at this time."

It wasn't true. There was indeed a plan in the works. Two days later, a draft of just such an executive order was leaked to the press. It is four pages long, anonymously written, and titled "Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom." The misnomer "religious freedom" here means that people who claim certain religious beliefs, beliefs that just so happen to be common tamong conservative Christians, would be legally free to express their disapproval of others' sexuality by discriminating against them. According to the proposed executive order, the following "religious" beliefs would be protected when they are expressed in words, actions, or refusals: "that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, sexual relations are properly reserved for such a marriage, male and female and their equivalents refer to an individual's immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy, physiology, or genetics at or before birth, and that human life begins at conception and merits protection at all stages of life." Individuals and organizations employed by the federal government would have such beliefs "reasonably accomodate[d]" within the scope of their federal employment assignment, and federal agencies could not subject them to any "adverse action" in response to such beliefs expressed outside of the scope of their assignment. Additionally, the status of religious organizations — here defined to include "closely held for-profit corporations, operated for a religious purpose, even if its purpose is not exclusively religious" — must not be in any way "disadvantage[d]" in response to such beliefs.

"We do not have plans to sign anything at this time," White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told ABC News on Feb. 1. This is, of course, the same White House that had just denied that the proposal existed at all. A White House official acknowledged on Feb. 2 that hundreds of potential executive orders have been drafted and that this is indeed one of them.

Sarah Posner wrote for The Nation: "The breadth of the draft order, which legal experts described as 'sweeping' and 'staggering,' may exceed the authority of the executive branch if enacted. It also, by extending some of its protections to one particular set of religious beliefs, would risk violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution."

Sources

"Sources: Trump executive order allowing anti-LGBTQ discrimination is coming soon," Jeff Taylor, Jan. 30, 2017.

" White House says anti-LGBTQ executive order 'not the plan at this time'," Jeff Taylor, LGBTQ Nation, Jan. 30, 2017.

"Leaked Draft of Trump's Religious Freedom Order Reveals Sweeping Plans to Legalize Discrimination." Sarah Posner. The Nation. Feb. 1, 2017.

"Proposed Trump Executive Order Could Curtail LGBT Rights," Rick Klein, ABC News, Feb. 1, 2017.

" Draft Of Trump 'Religious Freedom' Executive Order Signals Major Win For Conservative Christians," Antonia Blumberg, Huffington Post, Feb. 2, 2017.
Tucker Liebermanhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-62700836281678187352017-01-28T09:59:00.000-08:002017-02-07T19:31:02.234-08:00Under Trump administration, 'We the People' White House petition website is mysteriously broken (this post contains data table)

The U.S. White House website contains a petitions section that allows anyone to create a petition and gather signatures with the goal of obtaining a response from the White House. Suddenly, since the inauguration of Donald Trump, these petitions aren't working. Bug or feature?

The rules under the Obama administration, which created the petition functionality: Once a petition is created, its creator must reach two milestones within 30 days. First, the creator is responsible for circulating it to gather the first 150 signatures, as the creator is the only one who initially has the URL of the petition. Second, after the petition has 150 signatures, it will be published to the White House petitions webpage so that anyone can find it, and, if it reaches 100,000 signatures, the White House will respond to it. All petitions expire after 30 days, meaning they will no longer be available on the White House petitions webpage and will no longer be signable even if you know the direct URL.

The site promises: "Petitions will only be removed under the Moderation Policy — no petition will be removed because of the viewpoint it expresses." This assurance was still available as of Jan. 27, 2017, one week after Donald Trump was inaugurated as President. Nonetheless, a number of people noticed that certain petitions did not seem to be working.

For example, a petition called "Preserve the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities" was created on Jan. 21, 2017. Two days later, the Independent reported that this petition
"received hundreds of tweets from proud signees but the official count (at the time of writing) reads: '27 signed'." Jillian Steinhauer wrote for Hyperallergic on Jan. 25 that it "shows only 44 signatures, despite hundreds of people having tweeted that they signed it. Many have noticed the discrepancy, with one tweeter claiming that the petition had nearly 100,000 signatures yesterday [Jan. 24]; another says the number was originally in the tens of thousands. The other petition shows 734 signatures, a small climb from the 724 listed earlier today, but does not seem to be accurately counting those who've signed based on the sharing rate suggested by social media. It also appears to have been set up only after a previous petition vanished."
 Update: On Jan. 28, the count was at 176 and it was visible on the White House petitions webpage. An attempt to sign it was successful, incrementing the count to 177.

Not all petitions were working as of Jan. 28, however. For example, a petition titled "End the media blackout on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)" created on Jan. 25 still displayed only 1 signer as of Jan. 28, despite repeated attempts by several people to sign it. Accordingly, it showed the counter: "Needs 99,999 signatures by February 24, 2017 to get a response from the White House." Similarly, "To explain to the American people why President Donald J. Trump is such a needy little bitch," created Jan. 23, only had 1 signature five days after its creation, despite having a link distributed in a BuzzFeed article. That, to be fair, runs afoul of the site's 'Terms of Participation' banning "Defamatory or fraudulent statements" and "Terms commonly understood to constitute profanity or abusive or degrading slurs or epithets," but that does not fully explain why the petition still exists and is simply apparently not working.

Blake Montgomery wrote for BuzzFeed: "President Obama's administration created We The People in 2011...whether the Trump administration will respond to petitions is unconfirmed. On the day of his inauguration, Trump's administration archived all existing petitions on the platform." In other words, the Trump administration is not accepting new signatures on any petition created during the final days of the Obama administration, and one may speculate that they may not intend to respond to any of those petitions that may have reached the 100,000-signature goal. In that article, a White House spokesperson was quoted as attributing the malfunction to a technical bug: "It's a question of high volume at the end of the day, but the signatures are being captured. Because of high volume they're having to change how they're being captured."

Under this administration, technical difficulties — or, depending on your interpretation, diminished accountability to public comment — are not limited to the petition website. "Since at least the end of the Obama administration," Tyler Pager wrote for the Boston Globe on Jan. 26, "the White House's phone line for comments has not been taking calls. It is unclear exactly when the line was closed, and it is equally unclear when it will be back." A recorded message directs callers "to send us a comment online...or send us a message through Facebook messenger.'"

As quoted in an LA Times article about the closing of the telephone comment line on Mon. Jan. 23, the first business day after the inauguration, press assistant Giovanna Coia said, "We're still learning how to work our computers."

Update: People were calling the Capitol about their political concerns even though they couldn't call the White House. U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) tweeted at the end of the day on Feb. 2: "The last three days have been the BUSIEST IN CAPITOL SWITCHBOARD HISTORY. By almost double."

The following table shows all available petitions on the White House website as of Friday night, Jan. 27 and continuing through Sat. morning, Jan. 28. During this brief time period (about 15 hours, overnight), only one petition newly reached the 150-signature threshhold to be published to the site. This was the "Preserve the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities" petition referenced above, suggesting that it may be necessary for the White House website to receive negative press from an internationally recognized newspaper like The Independent before any specific petition will be published. Also during this time, no petitions newly crossed the 100,000 signature threshhold. Only two had over 100,000 signatures, and both of them had been created on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, suggesting that the new administration had not yet begun to change the way the petition site worked.

The domain WHPetitions.info, purchased in 2013, contains simple content that appears to confirm the above. It says: "Helping the White House keep its promise" and as of Jan. 28, 2017 it indicates that "0 White House petitions have met their signature thresholds". It appears that some values are supposed to auto-calculate, as suggested by what appears to be bogus output as a result of calculating with 0. "The White House has responded to 0 of them (-9223372036854775808%) with an average response time of -106752 days". The site credits Eli Dourado, whose active Twitter account identifies him as an "economist working on accelerating the pace of technological change."

Petitions on the W.H. website in late Jan. 2017
 Column 1 has the petition name, Column 2 has the number of signatures as of a certain date, and Column 3 has the incremented number of signatures as of the next day

Petition title	Signatures as of Fri 1/27, 8 pm ET	Signatures as of Sat 1/28, 11 am ET

Immediately release Donald Trump's full tax returns, with all information needed to verify emoluments clause compliance.	391,917	404,078

Divest or put in a blind trust all of the President's business and financial assets.	121,885	126,395

Donald Trump: Resign as President of the United States in Violation of the Emoluments Clause. Release Your Tax Returns	23,163	24,417

Let American Farmers Grow Hemp Once Again to Create Jobs and Rebuild the Rural Economy	20,690	21,389

Demand Trump administration add LGBT rights, climate change, and civil rights back to list of issues on wh.gov site	4,959	 6,422

Repeal the 1986 Hughes amendment	3,466	 3,588

Repeal the NFA	2,876	 3,143

Investigate Hillary Clinton for crimes committed against the People and Government of the United States.	1,688	 1,811

Do not defund the NEA or NEH	1,027	1,128

Demand justice for international students affected by ACICS' loss of accreditation power	916	945

Arrest and detainment of singer Madonna.	605	625

Charge Madonna with Terrorist Threats against the president of the United States of America.	568	599

Issue an International Arrest Warrant for George Soros	507	545

Boost the American Economy through Climate Action	440	 452

Immediately abolish the Net Worth Sweep of Fannie Mae(FNMA) and Freddie Mac(FMCC).	327	 335

Restore Education as a Constitutional Right & Protect Medical Freedom	296	 307

Change the law putting a financial strain on many disabled veterans	294	 298

Improved Medicare for All	285	 308

Pledge to continue funding the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities	252	339

Restore and maintain accurate, science-based information on climate change to the White House website.	285	 306

We the decent Venezuelan people ask President Donald Trump to help recoup Venezuela's sovereignty, liberty and democracy	281	 286

Call on the The Republic of Cameroon government to stop the killing and marginalization of Anglophone Cameroonians.	217	 223

Reinstate Lt. Col. Terry Lakin into the U.S. Army with full rank, pay, benefits and pension immediately.	171	 200

Total signatures across these 23 petitions
(Total change overnight: +21,024 signatures, or an average of 914 signatures per petition)	577,115	 598,139

One newly published petition on the W.H. website in late Jan. 2017
Column one has the petition name, column two would represent the number of signatures as of Friday night and this column is deliberately empty because the number is not known because the petition was not yet published, and column three has the number of signatures as of the next day

Petition title	Signatures as of Fri 1/27, 8 pm ET	Signatures as of Sat 1/28, 11 am ET

Preserve the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities	Unknown	176

Tucker Liebermanhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-52114980697980962072016-12-25T08:37:00.001-08:002016-12-25T08:37:12.220-08:00U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334 concerning Israeli settlement activity
On Dec. 23, 2016, the UN Security Council voted 14-0 on its Resolution 2334 concerning Israeli settlement activity. The vote was in favor of demanding that Israeli cease building settlements in disputed areas. The reason for condemning these settlements is that they are being built on disputed land that will likely have to be given to the future State of Palestine as part of any realistic peace agreement. The United States abstained from the vote, while some had hoped that it would use its veto power to stop the resolution.

After the vote, the Obama administration gave a 40-minute, on-the-record press call. On the call, Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, explained that President Obama had had "several rounds of discussions with Ambassador Rice, Ambassador Power, Secretary Kerry, and members of his national security team" before deciding not to veto the resolution. There is concern that accelerated settlement construction in disputed areas is an obstacle to a future peace agreement. Rhodes explained that "we cannot simply have a two-state solution be a slogan while the trend lines on the ground are such that a two-state solution is becoming less and less viable."

Separately, Ambassador Samantha Power said, "We would not have let this resolution pass had it not also addressed counterproductive actions by the Palestinians such as terrorism and incitement to violence, which we've repeatedly condemned and repeatedly raised with the Palestinian leadership, and which, of course, must be stopped."

The Obama administration continues to demonstrate its support for reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Three years previously, Secretary of State John Kerry spent nine months attempting to broker a deal (more information below).

2013: VP Joe Biden expresses his commitment to a two-state solution

The article below was originally posted to Helium Network on Oct. 1, 2013.

"This very moment may offer the best opportunity for peace," U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations currently under way in Washington. For the first time in years, he said, "both sides are talking directly, and both sides have taken some risk to get where they are today."

Biden addressed the J Street conference in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 30, 2013. Over 2,800 people were gathered in Washington for the conference. J Street is a political advocacy and education organization for American Jews who support a "two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, meaning the creation of a Palestinian state through negotiations with Israel.

"Like you, the president and I are absolutely devoted to the survival of the Jewish state of Israel," Biden said. That survival "requires a just and lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians."

He described Obama's commitment as "unrelenting." "That's why Obama chose Israel for his first visit in his second term," he explained. "That's why Secretary of State John Kerry has been there six times in the last six months."

He said that the United States shares practical security interests with Israel, as well as having a moral commitment to it. "If there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one," he quipped. More seriously, he added, "The leaders on both sides need to know, if they take risks for peace, their people will be behind them, and so will we."

Biden spoke on the last day of the federal government's fiscal year, as politicians were working overtime to determine whether the government would temporarily shut down beginning at midnight after failing to pass a budget for the coming year. For this reason, Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, had to cancel his appearance before the same crowd; he had been scheduled to speak to the J Street audience just before Biden.

Biden had also been busy, spending an earlier part of the day meeting with President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The J Street crowd enthusiastically received the vice president after waiting over two hours.

Of his meeting with Obama and Netanyahu, Biden said only that they had been "talking about issues that are of mutual concern" and that Netanyahu had publicly thanked Obama. Secretary of State John Kerry is the only one "authorized to comment publicly on the talks," as Kerry previously stated at the beginning of the nine-month negotiation process. The negotiations intend to arrive at a "final status agreement" that solves the conflict.

Biden reminded the audience that the United States is simultaneously addressing other security concerns in the Middle Eastern region. Obama has been focused on Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons. Syria killed about a thousand of its own citizens with sarin gas on Aug. 21, an incident that was close to the Israeli border and that occurred in the context of Syria's larger violent ethnic conflict.

Iran may be on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon, and Obama also spoke with the new Iranian president Hassan Rouhani on Sept. 27, the first such US-Iran diplomatic outreach in over 30 years. Furthermore, Egypt must continue building its democracy and maintain its peace treaty with Israel, Biden said.

"We approach these problems with a great deal of humility," he remarked, regarding efforts to resolve strategic problems that affect the entire world. "We cannot impose a solution."

"We cannot want peace in their country more than they do," he added.

He was introduced by Ambassador Lou Susman, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom. Susman said that Biden "understands that a two-state solution is the only solution" and commended him for having the "guts" to speak his mind to Israel and to other parties in the region. "I think we can all agree," Susman said, "that is the measure of a true friend: to tell others the truth."
 Tucker Liebermanhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-60829662341548740212016-12-21T17:49:00.001-08:002017-01-21T09:09:48.970-08:00Rick Perry's support for outlawing gay sex
This article was written for Helium Network in 2011. It was updated in 2014 and had minor updates in 2016.

Regarding the looming threat of openly gay Boy Scout leaders in his 2008 book On My Honor, longtime Texas Gov. Rick Perry claims that the Boy Scouts as an organization tolerate gay people but don't want a leader "whose personal agenda is to make an open issue of his sexual orientation." Within the book, he claims that he supports an individual's right to be gay — just not within the Boy Scouts! — but his record does not show that he has actually supported even that much.

Why Perry's approach to the topic is severely flawed

First, in focusing the argument in "On My Honor" only on those who are openly gay, Perry neglects to address the entire Scouting policy that excluded "known or avowed homosexuals" — that is, people who are merely discovered to be gay as well as those who openly acknowledge it.

Second, in trying to demonstrate how commonsense his position is, he begins with this disingenuous premise: "The defining characteristic of homosexuality and heterosexuality is sex. Scouting is not intended to advance a discussion about sexual activity, whether of the heterosexual form or the homosexual form." Notably, however, the Boy Scout policy excluded only "homosexuals" and not "heterosexuals." One can easily agree with Perry that a man should refrain from sharing his "dating patterns" with the children he mentors, but if a straight man may casually reveal his marital status should the question arise, why can't a gay man do the same?

Elsewhere in the book, Perry is more honest about his prejudices. An openly gay person, he says, turns his sexuality into an "issue" or a "public matter" that will inevitably trigger "debate" or become an object lesson in "sex education." The presence of gay leaders would cause the Boy Scouts to be "an experiment in social engineering." He conflates being "openly gay" with being "openly [sexually] active" and says that gay people make gay activism "central" to their lives and cannot refrain from talking about it around children. He provides not a single statistic or anecdote to bolster his assumptions, nor is there any indication that he attempted to speak to an actual gay person for research purposes.

Can an organization practice exclusion and still teach tolerance?

Perry denies that the exclusion of openly gay Scout leaders, as well as the exclusion of open atheists, teaches intolerance. He says it is just a way of avoiding debate on sexual matters and atheist ideology that are not part of the organization's mission.

Later in the book, however, he makes an unrelated observation that unwittingly challenges his own argument. He complains that some parents and teachers have asked for intelligent design theory (a form of creationism) to be removed from science classes and debated in religion classes instead. Instead of acknowledging that these people are simply trying to find a better forum for that debate according to their understanding of science and religion, Perry complains that "the left advocates tolerance while crushing dissenting views." In the case of science classes, then, he believes that the deliberate exclusion of dissenting views is an example of intolerance.

Might it be plausible, then, that gay would-be Scout leaders might perceive their exclusion from the organization as a way of crushing their dissenting viewpoints rather than as a benign relocation of their speech? And if Perry is correct in his analysis of the redirection of discussion about intelligent design, why wouldn't gay people also be correct about the redirection of their very persons to which they would be subject regardless of what they choose to discuss?

Does Perry support a person's right to be gay — anywhere?

Finally, Perry claims that "I respect their [gays'] right to engage in the individual behavior of their choosing," which the record shows to be flatly false. Texas had a longstanding "Homosexual Sodomy Law" which classified gay sex as a misdemeanor. Former President George W. Bush, while campaigning in 1994 to become governor of Texas, referred to sodomy laws as "a symbolic gesture of traditional values." In 2002, threatened by the possibility that the Supreme Court might declare this particular law to be unconstitutional (it did, the next year), Gov. Perry likewise championed the law as "appropriate."

Even in 2010, when the law had been unenforceable for seven years, the Texas Republican Party platform stated: "We oppose the legalization of sodomy." Perry ran his re-election campaign in association with this platform. Two subsequent attempts to remove the obsolete law — HB 2156 and HB 604 in the 2011 legislative session — did not make it out of committee. (The mention of support for anti-sodomy laws was finally removed in the 2012 Texas Republican Party platform, and a different bill to repeal the anti-sodomy law, SB 538, made some progress in 2013 before fizzling out.)

Richard Goldstein in his book Homocons proposed that few people relish the actual penalties that are inflicted on gay people as a result of sodomy laws; rather, the real reason straight people support sodomy laws is that they maintain a social hierarchy that privileges heterosexuality. This would explain why Bush praised the law's main impact as "symbolic" and why he made a vague appeal to "traditional values." In this context, the values in question are little more than one group having power over another group.

However, to pretend that the law has mainly a symbolic impact and not a material impact as well is demonstrably false, which is why such pretenses must be blown through. The criminalization of gay sex impacts people's lives by threatening their careers or their custody of their children. It is particularly egregious for Perry to say on the one hand throughout his political career that he supports the criminalization of gay sex and then to publish that he acknowledges people's "right to engage in the individual behavior of their choosing." He cannot mean the first in a purely symbolic way while meaning the latter in a material way. It is one law: he either supports it or opposes it.

Although people can no longer be prosecuted or penalized for same-sex liaisons in Texas because of the Supreme Court having declared such laws unconstitutional, the Texas Republican Party has frustrated all attempts to remove the law from the books and it remained there under Perry's governorship. If Perry genuinely believes in an adult's legal right to consensual sex with another adult of the same sex, there is one clear action he could take to demonstrate it: lead a bipartisan campaign to strike the obsolete sodomy law from the books. That he has not even made a statement suggesting he would be willing to do so — an inquiry with the gay rights organization Equality Texas in 2011 did not turn up any leads — suggests that he does not really support an individual's right to private sexual activity and only said so where it was convenient (albeit totally false) in his book.

The only way in which Perry supports an individual's right in this area is through his expressed support of their right to leave Texas and move to another U.S. state with more permissive laws, which he advocated in his 2010 book, Fed Up!.

What Texans want

Perry's position is out of step with the majority of Texans on issues pertaining to gay people. An opinion poll of Texas voters commissioned by Equality Texas in 2010 revealed that 78 percent knew someone who was gay; 60 percent thought that gay people were seeking "equal rights," not "special rights"; 69 percent thought that gay people should have the same parental rights as straight people; 63 percent supported recognizing same-sex relationships with a "civil union"; 62 percent supported "domestic partnership" benefits for government workers; and 43 percent thought Texas should perform same-sex marriages, a number that increased to 48 percent when the question was whether Texas should recognize such marriages if they had been performed elsewhere.

Perry is particularly out of step with the younger generation on these issues, given that people under 30 were more likely to express support for gay rights than were people over 65 on every issue proposed in that poll.

Another opinion poll conducted in 2012 by the University of Texas/Texas Tribune found that 69 percent supported recognizing same-sex relationships with either civil unions or full marriage. Only 25 percent wanted to maintain the status quo in that regard, and one imagines that a rather smaller number would have supported criminalizing sex between consenting adults in private, had they been asked.

Perry's presidential bids

Perry ran for the Republican Party nomination in the 2012 presidential election. That nomination finally went to Mitt Romney, who ultimately lost to Barack Obama, who was elected for a second term.

With regard to the nation as a whole, which is more liberal on these issues than Texas, several polls in 2011 found that a majority of Americans supported same-sex marriage and military service by openly gay people, the latter already having become military policy anyway. This was something with which Perry had to contend in his presidential campaign.

On Dec. 29, 2011, a questioner at a coffeehouse appearance asked him to discuss his view of limited government in light of Lawrence v. Texas. This was the Supreme Court case in 2003 surrounding two men who had been arrested for having consensual sex in their home in Texas, resulting in the ruling that anti-sodomy laws were unconstitutional in any state. Perry admitted that he was not familiar with the case, deriding the inquiry as an attempted "'I gotcha' question" and pleading, "I'm not a lawyer." When a reporter later asked him to clarify, he said the same thing: "I'm not taking the bar exam." His unfamiliarity with the case may explain why, as governor of Texas, he continued to support anti-sodomy laws for years after they were ruled unconstitutional. He dropped out of the presidential race on Jan. 19, 2012.

He campaigned again for the 2016 presidential election but dropped out on Sept. 11, 2015. When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, he nominated Rick Perry to be Secretary of Energy. On Jan. 19, 2017, Perry told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that he regretted his own presidential campaign pledge in 2011 to eliminate the department: "My past statements made over five years ago about abolishing the Department of Energy do not reflect my current thinking. In fact, after being briefed on some of the vital functions of the Department of Energy, I regret recommending its elimination."

The Boy Scouts, and the US, move forward

In May 2013, the Boy Scouts of America decided to allow openly gay youths — although not openly gay adult leaders — to participate in the organization. A clear majority of the 1,400-member national council voted for the change at an annual meeting in Texas. The resolution took effect in January 2014. In July 2015, the policy was changed again to allow gay leaders.

As 2014 opened, one-third of Americans lived in a state where same-sex marriage is recognized, and the federal "Defense of Marriage Act" that prevented recognition of such marriages for nearly two decades was finally ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. There is no movement to reintroduce anti-sodomy laws (save an abortive attempt by Virginia's Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli in 2013, the promotional website for which was disabled within a few months). Montana repealed theirs, as it had, of course, been unenforceable ever since Lawrence v. Texas. In 2016, Pew Research Center polling found that 55 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage rights and only 28 percent believe that homosexuality should be discouraged.

Rick Perry may wish to criminalize gay sex. However, it's hard to find other people who do, and there is neither political will nor constitutional room for it in the United States. In this area, Americans clearly prefer their limited government and their individual freedoms.
Tucker Liebermanhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-51894217230132891912016-12-07T17:46:00.001-08:002016-12-07T17:46:47.897-08:00Things you don't know you know about love
Adam Phillips:

"All love stories are frustration stories. As are all stories about parents and children, which are also love stories, in Freud's view, the formative love stories. To fall in love is to be reminded of a frustration that you didn't know you had (of one's formative frustrations, and of one's attempted self-cures for them); you wanted someone, you felt deprived of something, and then it seems to be there. And what is renewed in that experience is an intensity of frustration, and an intensity of satisfaction. It is as if, oddly, you were waiting for someone but you didn't know who they were until they arrived. Whether or not you were aware that there was something missing in your life, you will be when you meet the person you want."

Kathleen Dean Moore:

"The love of a mother for her infant is inevitable, unsurprising, Frank says. Take goats, for example. Whatever a mother goat smells right after she gives birth, that becomes the object of its goofy mother love. This is why, if a tiny kid dies, a goatherd will skin it and tie its steaming hide onto an orphan goat. The mother doesn't know or care. She doesn't love her kid. What she is attached to, what she is compelled to nourish and protect, is the blood-touched smell of a newborn kid: chemicals washing silently over receptors at the nose-edge of her brain. Love is a matter of hormones and pheromones and reproductive necessity, of rhythms and cycles, life and death, chemicals ebbing and flooding like tiny tides under a microscopic moon.

But what about lovers? I ask. What about tundra swans who mate for life and languish and die if their mate dies? What about ptarmigans, who follow each other around, clucking softly, fussing over each other, sifting their feathers? It's evolution again, according to Frank. Swans and ptarmigans nest on the ground, where their chicks need the protection of two parents, one to sit on the nest and one to warn off predators. Wandering foxes have long ago eaten the offspring of faithless parents."

James Lasdun:

"Courtly Love, that elaborate medieval attempt to reconcile raw desire with the smooth running of the social machine, is in fact a deliberate exercise in such ambiguities. Under its rules a young knight may fall in love with a married woman and enter into the steamiest of flirtations with her, in which everything is permitted except for the ultimate consummation. The beauty of the formula is that it appears to acknowledge both the force of lust and the virtue of fidelity. Like all codes of sexual conduct, it is fatally flawed, the state of deferred gratification being naturally unstable, and therefore highly likely to culminate in tragedy or farce. But it has an appealing realism about it, and at least tries to recognize the human psyche in all its contradictory totality."

John Stuart Mill:

"Though the practice of chivalry fell even more sadly short of its theoretic standard than practice generally falls below theory, it remains one of the most precious monuments of the moral history of our race; as a remarkable instance of a concerted and organized attempt by a most disorganized and distracted society, to raise up and carry into practice a moral idea greatly in advance of its social conditions and institutions; so much so as to have been completely frustrated in the main object, yet never entirely inefficacious, and which was left a most sensible, and for the most part a highly valuable impress on the ideas and feelings of all subsequent times. ... Chivalry was the attempt to infuse moral elements into a state of society in which everything depended for good or evil on individual prowess, under the softening influences of individual delicacy and generosity."

Ira F. Stone:

"Love is that internal emotional state achieved when fulfilling our needs leads to the pursuit of pleasure. To say that love is a complex phenomenon is an understatement. It communicates both desire for and service to another, and we will express these two aspects of love as yirat hashem (fear of God) and ahavat hashem (love of God) in later chapters. For our present purposes we recognize that love is an internal sensation, but one that is inextricably connected to something outside ourselves. We feel love when we take in or internalize enjoyment, but our love is also directed toward the source of that pleasure. Love describes the experience we have of belonging in the world and at the same time being beholden to the world and to other people in it. The pursuit of our own enjoyment would be impossible as a solitary activity, without stimulation beyond ourselves. Love is both a feeling and an acknowledgement. It ends up within us, but comes to us from the outside. We are affirmed by it, but we are indebted because of it – or, at least, we are conscious of its bi-directionality."

William Ian Miller:

"We know this about love, yet we don't know; we know that the particular contours of what we call love depend greatly on the object of that love, whether it be parents, spouse, lover, child, dog, country, faith, or friend; yet we are never quite sure which is the love that is the purest or deepest or that should set the standard for the others. Somehow all are felt to be paler versions of the love celebrated in fiction, the passionate quest for a mate. We are put to ranking these loves, in part, because the word 'love' applies to all of them and forces the comparison upon us. We think of them, if not exactly the same, as being of the same species."

Juan Valera:

"Who knows if he would grow tired of me and end up hating me?"

"I can see that you overanalyze things and enjoy torturing yourself by creating obstacles for what you want the most."

"Who says that is what I want? I myself do not know. I have my doubts. I cannot discern the depths of my soul. Might it be my vain pride, the childish contentment at being loved by a person of such standing, that leads me to believe that I love him too? What is love? Is love that which I feel in my heart and that draws me to this man? Listen, Manuela, I may as well tell you all. Everything is dark and muddled. There is another man whose every word I hang on when he speaks, whose gifts amaze me, whose intellectual superiority enthrall me, whose virtues fill me with wonder and thrill me, whose great kindness I can see clearly in the depths of his heart. And you are well aware of how it infuriates and disturbs me for anyone to think for one moment that my feelings for that man, and doubtless his feelings for me, could be confused with love."

Gabrielle Zevin:

Maya's not-christening party is held the week before Halloween. Aside from several of the children in attendance wearing Halloween costumes, the party is indistinguishable from either a christening christening or a book party. A.J. watches Maya in her pink party dress, and he feels a vaguely familiar, slightly intolerable bubbling inside of him. He wants to laugh out loud or punch a wall. He feels drunk or at least carbonated. Insane. At first, he thinks this is happiness, but then he determines it's love. Fucking love, he thinks. What a bother. It's completely gotten in the way of his plan to drink himself to death, to drive his business to ruin. The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything."

Martha Stout:

"Psychologically speaking, conscience is a sense of obligation ultimately based in an emotional attachment to another living creature (often but not always a human being), or to group of human beings, or even in some cases to humanity as a whole. Conscience does not exist without an emotional bond to someone or something, and in this way conscience is closely allied with the spectrum of emotions we call "love." This alliance is what gives true conscience its resilience and its astonishing authority over those who have it, and probably also its confusing and frustrating quality.

Conscience can motivate us to make seemingly irrational and even self-destructive decisions, from the trivial to the heroic, from missing an 8:00 meeting to remaining silent under torture for the love of one's country. It can drive us in this way only because its fuel is none other than our strongest affections. … A story about conscience is a story about the connectedness of living things, and in unconscious recognition, we smile at the true nature of the tale."

Simon Critchley:

"When Courtney Love first read out Cobain's [suicide] note at a press conference, she finished by saying to the crowd, 'Just tell him he's a fucker, OK?...and that you love him'. The ambivalence of Cobain's suicide note of love and hate is captured precisely in Love's hate. This is what Jacques Lacan called 'hainamoration', 'hate-love'."

Sources

Adam Phillips. Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. pp. 17-18.

Kathleen Dean Moore, Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water. New York: Harvest, 1995. pp. 24-25.

James Lasdun. Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked. New York: Picador, 2013. pp. 91-92.

John Stuart Mill. The Subjection of Women. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2001. Originally London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1869. p 82.

Ira F. Stone. A Responsible Life: The Spiritual Path of Mussar. New York: Aviv Press, 2006. p. 12.

William Ian Miller. Faking It. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. p 180-181.

Juan Valera, Doña Luz

Gabrielle Zevin. The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2014.

Martha Stout. The Sociopath Next Door. Harmony, 2005. (Released by Random House Digital for Kindle.)

Simon Critchley. Suicide. Thought Catalog, 2015.
Tucker Liebermanhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-74317740945707785812016-12-07T14:00:00.000-08:002016-12-07T14:00:03.833-08:00Quotes: Talking oneself into fear
"Anxiety is continual death."
Nicolas Berdyaev. The Divine and the Human. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1949. p 61.

"In the actual victim, according to various Gothic Tales, this glorying in impenetrability takes the form of admiration, even love of the cruel one while he is coiled to strike. And in the spectator there is a sense of identify [sic] or empathy with both the sufferer and the agent of that suffering. This double identity is the 'terrible and indefinite curiosity of despair' we call 'horror.'"
Philip P. Hallie. The Paradox of Cruelty. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969. p. 73.

"[The wise do] not put a wrong construction upon everything."
Seneca, quoted by Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy, New York: Vintage Press, 2000. p 103.

"Then I realized that we [Jews] have something better [than Christmas traditions]. We have fire. Think about it. The whole shpiel of Hanukkah is lighting the menorah to commemorate the miracle of the lamp oil that lasted for eight days (whatever.) Little kids like myself were handed matches and told to light the candles. I remember standing mesmerized in front of the flames as my mother and father gave us our nightly presents. It felt so dangerous. And in my book, just like rock beats scissors, danger beats tinsel."
 "In Defense of Hanukkah," Barbara Rushkoff. Fresh Yarn. December 2004. Accessed December 25, 2004.

"...reason is often a casualty of fear...
* * *
Both religious faith and uncomplicated explanations of the world are even more highly valued at a time of great fear." [Al] Gore isn't slamming religion but is instead criticizing an interpretation of faith that contradicts reason. Faith is not the enemy of reason; fear is, something we seem to forget when we're afraid and searching for answers."
Nikki Stern. Because I Say So: The Dangerous Appeal of Moral Authority. Bascom Hill Books, 2010. p. 48, 121. Quoting Al Gore, The Assault on Reason (New York: Penguin Books, 2007) p. 55.

"To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true."
Civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, quoted in PhillyMag.com, quoted in The Week, May 18, 2012, p. 19.

" Western psychologists call this biological response to experience an 'affect.' * * * Only in mammals do cognition and memory interact with affect to create the emotion of fear."
Tara Brach. Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha. Chapter 7, "Opening Our Heart in the Face of Fear." p. 166.

"Our worship of heroes who brave fear and go beyond the call of duty distracts us from the importance of those who simply (not easily) fulfill their duty in the face of fear—those, that is, who avoid cowardice. If it is a dangerous idea, as we shall see again and again, it is also a bracing one. More abstractly, pondering cowardice illuminates (from underneath, as it were) our moral world. What we think about cowardice reveals a great deal about our conceptions of human nature and responsibility, about what we think an individual person can and should have to endure, and how much one owes to others, to community or cause. Cowardice and cowards have something to teach us. Let us speak of them."
Chris Walsh. Cowardice: A Brief History. Princeton University Press, 2014. p. 21.

"We believed our paranoia would protect us; after all, what are the odds that two girls so well versed in disaster would be the ones to fall prey to it?"
Koethi Zan, The Never List
Tucker Liebermanhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-21976689336469640952016-12-07T02:08:00.001-08:002016-12-07T02:08:52.802-08:00Quotes: 'There is no time...'
"If the situation is to be different, then the moment in time must have such decisive significance that for no moment will I be able to forget it, neither in time nor in eternity, because the eternal, previously nonexistent, came into existence in that moment. "
Johannes Climacus (Soren Kierkegaard). Philosophical Fragments. ed. and trans. by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton University Press, 1985. p 13.

"I shall use the term presence to denote the point of intersection in man's existence; and the term flow of presence to denote the dimension of existence that is, and is not, time. "
Eric Voegelin, "Immortality: Experience and Symbol," 1967

"Memory is not just the imprint of the past time upon us; it is the keeper of what is meaningful for our deepest hopes and fears. As such, memory is another evidence that we have a flexible and creative relation to time, the guiding principle being not the clock but the qualitative significance of our experiences. "
Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself, p 258

"There is no time where the Spirit has not been nor will not be; it neither was nor is it yet to be. It is forever now."
G. W. F. Hegel. Reason in History: A General Introducton to the Philosophy of History. Translated by Robert S. Hartman. Indianapolis: Library of Liberal Arts, Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1953. (Originally 1837.) p 65.

"I see the Past, Present, and Future existing all at once before me. "
William Blake

"Time does not exist! There exist no perpetual and eternal appearance and disappearance of phenomena, no ceaselessly flowing fountain of ever appearing and ever vanishing events. Everything exists always! There is only one eternal present, the Eternal Now, which the weak and limited human mind can neither grasp nor conceive."
P. D. Ouspensky. A New Model of the Universe: Principles of the psychological method in its application to problems of science, religion, and art. Translated by R. R. Merton. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., 1997. (Originally published New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931.) p. 139.
Tucker Liebermanhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-91251776081042256582016-11-21T16:06:00.001-08:002016-11-21T16:06:43.293-08:00What evil looks like
People who perpetrate cruelty do not look any different outwardly than anyone else. "We can all become beasts," said Chris Hedges.

Deborah Feldman:

"'Hitler had chicken feet, you know,' Bubby remarks. 'That's why he never took off his shoes. So they wouldn't see he was a sheid, a ghost.' She scrubs at the burned remains of chicken fricassee on the bottom of a cast-iron skillet, her calloused fingers marked by years of housework. I don't think this world is such a simple place, in which bad people have deformities that mark them as evil. That's not how it works. Evil people look just like us. You can't take off their shoes and know the truth."

Their problems are inside. They may be immature, naïve, not in possession of knowledge of any civil way to deal with their traumas. If they run the state, the state will be cruel.

Clive James:

"In the long run, the Banality of Evil interpretation of human frightfulness is not quite as useful as it looks. It helps us appreciate the desirability of not placing ourselves in a position where the rule of justice depends on natural human goodness, which might prove to be in short supply. But it tends to shield us from the intractable facts about human propensities. * * * Educated in a hard school of bombed refugee camps, the Arab torturer was trying to show his clueless American victim what it felt like to be helpless. It is possible that all torturers are attempting to teach their own version of the same lesson. But in that case we are bound to consider the further possibility that anyone might be a torturer. The historical evidence suggests that on the rare occasions when a state begins again in what a fond humanitarian might think of as a condition of innocence, a supply of young torturers is the first thing it produces. Certainly this was true of Pol Pot's Cambodia."

Yet their crimes may be unusual and elaborate, "interesting" in the cursed sense.

Norman Mailer:

"Eichmann, superficially speaking, was a little man, an ordinary man in appearance, and vulgar and dull, but to assume therefore that evil itself is banal strikes me as exhibiting a prodigious poverty of imagination."

Sources

Chris Hedges. I Don't Believe in Atheists, Chapter 4.

Deborah Feldman. Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012. pp. 95-96.

Clive James. Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts. (2007) New York: Norton, 2008. p. 277-278.

Norman Mailer. The Spooky Art: Thoughts on Writing. New York: Random House, 2004. p. 150.
Tucker Liebermanhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-6274323191993203585.post-86963296968156898272016-11-21T10:00:00.000-08:002016-11-21T10:00:21.189-08:00Inconsistencies in crediting success and suffering to God
On the inconsistency of crediting success and suffering to God:

Some people credit mainly good things to God. In his memoir, Donald Miller wrote of his immature concept of a "slot-machine God:" "If something nice happened to me, I thought it was God, and if something nice didn't, I went back to the slot machine, knelt down in prayer, and pulled the lever a few more times."

Christopher Hitchens wrote in God is not Great:

"But the human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal. In England the monarch is the hereditary head of the church as well as the hereditary head of the state: William Cobbett once pointed out that the English themselves colluded in this servile absurdity by referring to "The Royal Mint" but "The National Debt." Religion plays the same trick, and in the same way, and before our very eyes. On my first visit to the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, a church that was built to celebrate the deliverance of Paris from the Prussians and the Commune of 1870-1871, I saw a panel in bronze which showed the exact pattern in which a shower of Allied bombs, dropped in 1944, had missed the church and burst in the adjoining neighborhood..."

Deepak Chopra wrote: "As they surveyed the wreckage of their lives, the dazed survivors mumbled the same response: I'm alive only by the grace of God.They did not consider (nor express out loud) that the same God might have sent the storm."

Other people tend toward anger at God for their suffering. Rick Warren wrote in his bestseller The Purpose Driven Life: "People often blame God for hurts caused by others. This creates what William Backus calls 'your hidden rift with God.'" Another possibility is that a cosmic force of evil, the opposite of God, perpetrates injury. The effect, however, is the same. "The more that Satan is guilty, then the more that Adam is innocent! If the devil is the instigator of sin, then the sinner is only a dupe," wrote Vladimir Jankelevitch. In other words, blaming either God or Satan lets humans off the hook for the injuries they cause each other.

Frederic Luskin said that forgiveness is "learning to make peace when something in your life doesn't turn out the way you wanted it to. It's an inner quality not dependent on anyone else, an assertive and necessary life skill rather than a specific response to a particular life situation. People who are hurt have a narcissistic perspective that it's unusual to be hurt, but in fact it's common. When you understand how common it is, you can forgive life."

For others, neither good nor bad is credited to God. They may be atheists; they may be religious people who do not believe that God is responsible for causing personalized, specific effects in the lives of individuals; or they may claim to believe that God does this without being able to bring themselves to acknowledge any specific instance as God's handiwork. Of the last category, Carol M. Swain writes: "...even though we say we believe in God, we live like atheists. We consider God to be either nonexistent or irrelevant — and certainly not in the business of distributing rewards and punishments."

One could be clever and attribute both varieties to God. George F. Will: "The theologically serious and mordantly witty Peter De Vries wrote in one of his novels about a Connecticut river flood to which a local pastor responded by praying 'that a kind Providence will put a speedy end to the acts of God under which we have been laboring.'"

The theologian Charles Hartshorne asked: "There is only one solution of the problem of evil 'worth writing home about.' It uses the idea of freedom, but generalizes it. Why suppose that only people make decisions?" Very well, but it should be clear that having God make decisions only transfers responsibility onto God. Positing different moral rules for God creates a new problem. H. J. Rose framed it: "...if some things were right for men and others for gods, was there any real moral difference between actions at all?"

Sources

Donald Miller. Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson Books, 2003. p. 9.

Christopher Hitchens. God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2007. pp. 76-77.

Deepak Chopra. How To Know God: The Soul's Journey into the Mystery of Mysteries. New York: Harmony Books, 2000. p 58.

Rick Warren. The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002. p. 94.

Vladimir Jankelevitch. Forgiveness. Translated by Andrew Kelley. University of Chicago Press, 2005. Originally Le Pardon, 1967. p 58.

Frederic Luskin, quoted in Rahel Musleah, "The Dance of Forgiveness," Jewish Woman, Fall 2002. p 36.

Carol M. Swain. Be the People: A Call to Reclaim America's Faith and Promise. Thomas Nelson, 2011.

George F. Will. "Leviathan in Lousiana." Newsweek. September 12, 2005. p 88.

Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, p 13.

H. J. Rose. Religion in Greece and Rome. New York: Harper and Row, 1959. p 91. Originally published as Ancient Greek Religion (1946) and Ancient Roman Religion (1948), London: Hutchinson and Co., Limited.
Tucker Liebermanhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com